Everything began with an unloved game jam prompt. In August 2012, fresh off The Binding of Isaac's enormous success, Edmund McMillen took part in Ludum Dare 24. The theme for that competition's entries was put to the vote until, after five rounds, the organisers were left with a top 20. "Plus one joke theme," according to the now-deprecated webpage: "1,000 kittens."

This theme came dead last in public voting. McMillen took it as his inspiration regardless, and together with Team Meat co-founder Tommy Refenes began prototyping a game that featured not just 1,000 cats but – according to an early marketing tagline – 12 sextillion of them. "I just love the idea of going infinite," McMillen says. This number was achieved using a method McMillen had developed with his previous game, using Flash to add multiple layers of ‘animation clips' to augment the character's look. "I really liked how he'd change visually as you went," he says of Isaac. "And that was the initial spark. I could make a cat-like shape with a bunch of different clips for arms, legs, bodies, heads, whatever – randomise them. We could simulate those as DNA, and then you could have the cats breed and spit out all these different combinations."

It was a simple idea, but one McMillen found himself "pretty obsessed with". Dig up his blog posts from the time, and the enthusiasm is evident. "It's been very hard to keep this one a secret," he wrote in the announcement post for Mew-Genics, as it was then known. This was in October 2012, just weeks after the game jam.

Of course, the game would go on to be a success that dwarfed even Binding of Isaac, selling a million copies in its first week of release. But it'd take an awfully long time to get there, and at the beginning, in the case of everyone but McMillen, the idea was as unloved as the prompt that had spawned it.

From Mew-Genics, to Mewgenics

A year on from that fateful Ludum Dare, McMillen and Refenes had a version of the game they reckoned they were ready to show in public – albeit not one that looked anything like the Mewgenics we know today. "There was a house you could upgrade over time, where you could interact with the cats, and they'd have these wacky animations, and then use those cats as avatars in minigames," McMillen recalls. "I think we only had one functional minigame, the cat fights, which was this Pokémon-esque turn-based combat game."

That was the version of the game Team Meat intended to demo at PAX Seattle in August 2013. At the very last minute, there was a change of mind, and the pair attended without the playable build they'd announced. It proved to be a turning point in more ways than one.

"When we came back from PAX, Tommy was like, ‘I can't work on this anymore," McMillen says. "And I begged, I pleaded… but it was cancelled. That was it. There was nothing I could really do about it." At the time, Refenes' sole interest was making a follow-up to Team Meat's hit platformer, which would be announced the following August as Super Meat Boy Forever. In the announcement blogpost, McMillen explained: "Mewgenics is not cancelled, we just put it on hold to work full time on this one."

Super Meat Boy Forever would eventually be released in 2020. By then, McMillen was no longer part of the project, or Team Meat. "I realised we wanted very different things," he reflects now. At the time, though, he kept trying to make the Mewgenics dream a reality. "I was still pitching it to Tommy before I left. I was trying to wrap it in a genre that I thought he would be excited about."

One version McMillen remembers was closer to Spelunky, the game that had inspired his step into Roguelikes with Isaac. Another came from his longtime friend and collaborator Tyler Glaiel, a fellow traveller in the '00s Flash webgame scene. "I remember suggesting back then: ‘Why not try Final Fantasy Tactics-style combat instead of Pokémon combat?'" Glaiel says. "Because they're on the same tree, kind of, but you can do a lot more with the positioning stuff." McMillen laughs: "Yeah. One has depth, and the other has the illusion of depth."

After McMillen left Team Meat in December 2016, he and Glaiel were free to work together again – not on Mewgenics, but on action platformer The End Is Nigh. "The whole time this was happening, I kept pushing these Mewgenics-like ideas at Tyler," McMillen says. One was a game featuring randomly generated aliens that the player could breed.

"There were some differences," Glaiel says. "The animation was weirder, because it was more rigged and physics-y, because the body parts were so different from each other." Still, Glaiel knew exactly what his old friend was up to. "You just wanted to make Mewgenics, I could tell," he says to McMillen. And, after working on the alien prototype for a week or so, he concluded: "This is a worse theme than cats." After all, it lacked the heartfelt motivations that had driven McMillen to this idea in the first place.

Because, despite the way Mewgenics encourages you to treat your cats, the developer is an animal lover. "Our first cat, Guppy, was a stray kitten that was abandoned in a planter box by its mother," he says. Guppy passed away in 2014 but was immortalised as a powerful character transformation in The Binding of Isaac. "And then, with money and whatever else, my wife was like, ‘I want a hairless cat.'"

That was his introduction to the world of designer cat breeding. The McMillen family have owned three hairless cats, the latest "a Russian import named Puggy", but he has little love for the industry that produces them, which he feels prioritises aesthetic features – unusual ear shapes or fur patterns – over the health of the cats themselves. "They're breeding for rare drops! It's the same as in the game!" These words are delivered with a righteous fury that seems to have burned in McMillen through the long journey from inception to release. "And that's what really kept me going throughout."

Hairless horrors

After The End is Nigh shipped in 2017, McMillen and Glaiel were finally ready to start turning this idea into a reality. The game's themes were already in place, as was a visual style and a cast of characters: Dr Beanies, Butch and the rest made their debut in blogposts dating back to 2012. You can even find an early version of the theme tune, recorded by rock duo Ridiculon. The one remaining question: what kind of game was this going to be?

"There's a bunch of prototypes from that era," Glaiel says. One was "a Castle Crashers-esque beat-'em-up". That proved difficult given the developers wanted multiple characters in play at once, "because you can tell more interesting stories when it's a group, instead of just one cat". So how were they to make that work in real time, without taking the multiplayer route? Glaiel remembers some possible solutions: "What if you have one main cat and a bunch of smaller follower cats that repeat what you do? What if it's just three AI-controlled cats, and one main cat you're controlling?"

They also experimented with making a StarCraft-style RTS. That proved to be "a nightmare to control," Glaiel says. "There was no strategy. You couldn't dodge attacks because you didn't have direct control. You could only tell things what to do, so if an enemy was going to hit you, it had to have a five-second windup so you had time to click your cats and move them away."

"It's funny," McMillen says to his friend. "When you describe them now, they don't sound bad." Glaiel agrees: "Both of those prototypes, I think there's a world where we executed on them and made a decent game. Probably not as interesting as the one we ended up making…"

The game they ended up making, of course, came back to Glaiel's old suggestion of turn-based tactics. Years earlier, McMillen had brushed off the idea because it would mean an awful lot of work. "And that's true," says Glaiel, having worked on this incarnation of the game from 2020 to 2026. "Certainly can't disagree with that!"

Part of what made things so complicated was that the game had two layers. The pet sim McMillen had started out with, and the tactical RPG Glaiel had introduced to the mix were dependent on each other to function. The specifics of the cat-breeding system couldn't be nailed down until they'd "made sure the combat was working fine," Glaiel explains. "Because the breeding doesn't really matter if you don't have anything to use the cats you're breeding for."

Their solution to this sticky situation? "We just kind of worked on the systems seemingly at random, until they were mostly complete, and then we connected them all together," McMillen says. "And we never spoke about it, really." This was only possible because of the pair's dynamic and shared sensibilities – and even so, it didn't always work out. "We were just kind of hoping our assumptions were correct," McMillen says. "And some of them were wrong."

One of those dead ends involved the game's cast of weirdo NPCs, who'd been around since 2012. What role they'd actually serve in-game didn't become clear until late in development, McMillen says. "Initially, the idea was that you'd upgrade the NPCs with money." They didn't like the player grind that encouraged, and so he searched for an alternative before eventually realising: "Wait, we have a resource right here. We have cats."

In the final game, any kittens with undesirable traits or elderly fighters past their prime can be dumped on these characters in exchange for rewards – something else that wasn't obvious at first. "Dr Beanies giving you side quests, we figured that out less than a year before the game came out," Glaiel says. "Before that, he'd give you an ability needle, with a random ability from one of the cats you'd sent him. And they'd just clog up your inventory, because most of the time it would just be some colourless ability."

Rather than ditching this idea entirely, however, the developers found another home for it – you can obtain ability needles by beating an optional hard route with one of the late-game areas. "There's a lot of that," McMillen says, "where we'll do a system, it'll be really in-depth and interesting, but maybe doesn't work how we intended. We don't forget it's there. We make a mental note, and in the future, when there's a hole we need to fill, we can just pull that shit back out."

This resulted in one of Mewgenics' greatest strengths: its wealth of ideas, where something originally designed as a headline feature might be tucked away where relatively few players will ever find it. "The people who have been playing it hardcore since release are starting to go, ‘I've got 300 hours in this game, and I've never seen this before'," McMillen says. "There's a tremendous amount of this very rare, difficult-to-find shit that we just kept adding. And those details, even though they're somewhat needless at times, create the illusion this is a living world. That's where the magic is with games like this."

That's something McMillen learned with Isaac, over the many post-launch updates developed alongside Mewgenics' very long journey to release. He admits to feeling competitive with his own game: "The bar got raised so high, especially with where Isaac ended. Going into this [project], we had this not-so-indirect comparison of: ‘This is what we're going up against – this game that has ten years of development content in it already'."

Although it's less than a year old, Mewgenics already feels like a game that's undergone a similar decade-long period of iteration and expansion. And with many millions of cats having already been fed through its meat grinder, McMillen and Glaiel have been able to see that old magic at work over and over again.

"There are things we forgot were in the game," Glaiel says. He describes an online discussion where a player was trying to figure out why a particular unit had been blinded in battle. "And it's like, ‘Oh, he was standing on a dirt tile, and he used a wind ability – and that apparently blinds them'. I don't remember putting that interaction in the game."

This is apparently news to McMillen, too: "I remember we briefly joked about it very early on, when we made those tiles. I didn't know it was ever implemented." The pair begin trading possible interactions, wondering if they're in the game or not, or whether they should be. Do holy-element powers cause grass to grow, the same way water does? Gravity powers crush grass, and immobilise flying units – but what about water? And how does it interact with rocks?

"I don't think it does a lot," Glaiel replies. "It's mostly just there as a tag for Psychics to interact with." And that gets them onto the ways the elements' effects could be expanded in future. Glaiel, on the spot, starts musing: "One of our DLC classes could probably do stuff with gravity…" When it comes to "going infinite", McMillen has clearly met his match.

This Mewgenics article was first published in issue 424 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

The Honkai Star Rail livestream 4.7 codes are the most recent promos to be announced for this gacha RPG, and as usual they offer lots of Stellar Jade to top up your balance, in addition to Credits, Traveler's Guide, and Refined Aether. They were announced during the "Now, Lay Laughter to All Stars" special program, where we got to see The Laughter on a livestream for the first time as they brought us up to speed on the latest developments for the game. These promos won't last long, so these are the Honkai Star Rail livestream 4.7 codes and how to redeem them.

Honkai Star Rail livestream 4.7 codes

• NEVERGONNAGIVE – 100x Stellar Jade, 50,000x Credits
• NEVERGONNAMAKE – 100x Stellar Jade, 5x Traveler's Guide
• AHABLESSYOU – 100x Stellar Jade, 4x Refined Aether

The above promos were revealed during the livestream of the "Now, Lay Laughter to All Stars" special program, and they are valid until Saturday, October 31 at 9am PDT / 12noon EDT / 4pm GMT – so you don't have long to redeem them and add their rewards to your account.

How to redeem Honkai Star Rail livestream codes

You have two choices when it comes to redeeming Honkai Star Rail codes, as this can be done through the game itself or via a web browser. To claim them in-game:

• Open the phone menu
• Hit the three dots in the top right corner
• Select Redemption Code from the list
• Type in your code
• Use the mailbox icon on the right of the screen to pick up your rewards

It's also possible to redeem Honkai Star Rail codes through the browser on your phone or computer:

• Head to the HoYoverse Redeem Code page and log in
• Choose your regional server
• Check that the correct character nickname has appeared
• Type in your code
• Open the in-game mailbox to receive your rewards

That's all you need to do – and remember that you only have to redeem the Honkai Star Rail livestream codes before they expire, then you have 30 days to actually open the mail in-game to collect the items you've claimed.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

McDonalds Pokemon Happy Meals are coming back very soon, but only some parts of the world will be able to collect them this year.

The fast-food chain has finally unveiled its crossover for 2026 via social media after numerous leaks, and each pack will include a toy along with two cards. However, while some territories like the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will be getting the McDonalds Pokemon Happy Meals from early November '26, other regions won't receive it until much later. Poke-fans in the UK and Ireland will have to wait until February 2027 to catch 'em all, for example.

Although it seems as though the majority of countries involved in the crossover will be enjoying their McDonalds Pokemon Happy Meal in November and December (including a significant chunk of Europe and Asia – I count 42 countries in December alone), it looks like the majority of South America has to wait until January 2027. The UK and Ireland are then left at the bottom of the barrel, being the only countries dropping in February 2027.

There are three happy meal boxes on offer (Pikachu, Umbreon, and Torchic) that include two cards each and a toy. We've got 15 toys in total, but don't expect a classic figure; they're actually a miniature Happy Meal box depicting different Pokemon, from Eevee to Bulbasaur.

So far as the cards go, it looks as though there will also be 15 available. While the official listing seems to have been pulled due to an accidental reveal of 2027 cards that will not be in the McDonalds Pokemon Happy Meals, reliable source Pokebeach suggests we can expect the following:

• Decidueye
• Chandelure
• Palafin
• Pikachu
• Mimikyu
• Lucario
• Hawlucha
• Tyranitar
• Absol
• Zoroark
• Metagross
• Jirachi
• Eevee
• Snorlax
• Wooloo

• See the latest 30th Celebration offers at Amazon UK

Based in the US? You can start grabbing these Pokemon Happy Meals from November 10. Just beware of resellers – seeing as they were charging up to $100 for empty Pokemon Krispy Kreme boxes earlier this year, I suspect it's gonna be rough out there.

Want an idea of what to play next? Don't miss the best card games. As for savings on the Pokemon TCG, here's what to expect from this year's Black Friday Pokemon card deals.

Pinkie Promise codes can award you with free revives to give you an extra chance if you get caught by the deadly Pinkie Pie in this My Little Pony fan game. While you're trying to help the usually adorable pony plan a party, she'll trigger a deadly game of hide and seek, and these codes come in useful if you find it hard to stay hidden.

While I never thought I'd see My Little Pony and horror combined, it certainly seems to work in this Roblox mascot adventure as Pinkie Pie gets a little too obsessed with planning her latest party. Help her out and don't break your pinky promise by sneaking into her room... or else.

If you're looking for rewards with a wider use across all of your experiences, then we've got all of the details on the current Roblox promo codes.

All Pinkie Promise codes

The Pinkie Promise codes you can redeem right now are:

• PINKIEPROMISE - 1x Revive

There is currently only one Pinkie Promise code available, offering up one free revive, which usually costs Robux. Hopefully more codes will be released with the launch of Chapter 2, and I'll keep an eye on the situation.

How to redeem Pinkie Promise codes

To redeem Pinkie Promise codes, you must first access the Shop from the main menu. You can't access the codes menu from within a game. From the Shop, either scroll to the bottom or select the Codes tab which will take you straight there. Here, you'll find the Enter Code box where you can copy a code from the list above. Click Redeem to claim your rewards.

It's worth keeping in mind that Pinkie Promise codes are not case-sensitive, so you only have to ensure you get the spelling correct.

Expired Pinkie Promise codes

• There are currently no expired codes.

Since we're only on the first Chapter of Pinkie Promise, there are no expired yet, but that will likely change in the future, and I'll add any invalid codes to this list so you don't waste your time trying to redeem them.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The end is nigh for Pokemon's free-to-play MOBA title Pokemon Unite, which is set to shut down for good almost six years after its launch in March 2027.

In a blog post shared today, the Pokemon Unite devs confirm that service for both the Switch and mobile versions of the game come to an end on March 23, 2027, at midnight UTC. "We offer our sincerest gratitude to the many Trainers who have played since service started for the Nintendo Switch version on July 21, 2021," a statement reads.

From now on, new purchases of Aeos gems (premium microtransactions) have been stopped, though anyone with a remaining stash will still be able to use what they'd already got until the game is shut down. Similarly, the paid monthly membership service, Unite Club, can no longer be purchased by new subscribers – existing members will continue to receive their paid benefits until their current membership period ends, with automatic renewals also now switched off.

As a last hurrah for the game, on November 12, Pokemon Unite will be getting an update that adds a couple of key things – a special event that'll run to the end of service, which will let you earn Unite coins from logging in and completing missions. These can be exchanged for things like Unite licenses for different playable Pokemon, Holowear to dress them up in, and trainer fashion items.

The other new feature to be added is a big one for longtime players who want something to remember the game by even after its shutdown – if you complete a required download before the end of service, you'll be able to access a library feature "to view certain records and in-game content."

The devs explain: "This will allow Trainers to visit the Practice Area as well as view items and achievements they obtained in-game – such as Holowear, Unite licenses, Trainer fashion items, emblems, tournament results, and more – even after service ends. We are also working on a way to look back at special memories you created with your Pokemon."

It's sad news – Unite may not have been the most popular Pokemon spin-off, but it's great fun and has also been a major part of tournaments like the Pokemon Europe International Championships and Worlds, where it's drawn extremely enthusiastic crowds. Being sat in the crowd for the EUIC finals a few years ago was genuinely one of my highlights of the event, even though I didn't play Unite at the time, just because the excitement was so contagious.

"Again, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone involved with Pokemon UNITE up to this point," the devs conclude. "We hope you continue to enjoy Pokemon UNITE until service ends."

Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald Switch ports feel all but confirmed, fans believe as new Pokemon Home update suggests more GBA games could be on the way.

A new research paper co-authored by a Game Freak developer dives deep into next-gen water simulation tech, raising hopes for Pokemon Winds and Waves' summery vistas and underwater areas.

Game Freak programmer Fumiya Narita and University of Tokyo professor Takashi Kanai recently co-published a new paper that aims to help render water and moving liquids more efficiently, without sacrificing any of the visual detail that really makes the ocean splash in animation. (Good spot, Automaton.)

Their joint research paper was presented during the international Pacific Graphics 2026 conference held in Singapore, and there's quite a bit of technical knowhow involved, of course. Essentially, the research explains that detailed liquid physics presents a heavy computational load on many games, so the new tech looks to simplify the under-the-hood calculations and concentrate on the most impressive details - the splashes, ripples, maybe even the waves…

It's worth noting that the research didn't show off the tech using any in-game demonstration, and Game Freak hasn't confirmed whether the research will affect next year's Pokemon Winds and Waves, either.

Regardless, it's not hard to see how this research could hypothetically impact the next mainline Pokemon RPG. The game's debut trailer showed off massive oceans with tons of simulated movement, as well as an underwater biome that suggests we might be able to dive below the surface this time around.

We'll need to wait for Pokemon Winds and Waves to come out sometime in 2027 - exclusively on Switch 2 - to find out more.

Pokemon Winds and Waves might not have turn-based battles as Game Freak veteran hints the combat system "could change" thanks to Pokemon Champions

As I constantly have a wireless speaker in my pocket at all times in the shape of my smartphone, I've felt little desire to pick up a standalone one in 2026. Yet a week with the new Pokemon Special Edition Beats Pill has reminded me that portable audio sounds better when it's not tinny and draining the valuable battery of my Android-based phone.

The Pokemon Special Edition £149.99 (via Apple) speaker launched last week, swapping its plain coloring for a Pikachu and Mimikyu design across its grill, and even a small Pokeball sitting on the strap. Naturally, slapping Pokemon on tech gets my attention, but the speaker managed to grab and keep it by providing not just a cute design, but a sublime sound that has changed my friends' and I's gaming nights forever.

The speaker became the star of my weekend. I took it over to my friend's house as we queued up an evening of hanging out to get our minds off the scary world around us. As it's the Halloween season, I hastily grabbed and brought over some good scares in the form of Chucky: The Game (2025) by Goliath Games, and packed the speaker just in case.

I'm glad I thought to pack it, as it became the perfect addition to get us into the 'zone' for some spooky fun. I used the Beats Pill to play some Chucky-themed ambience in the background, which consisted of audio clips from the Child's Play/Chucky franchise played over thunder and rain sounds. It sounded fine coming through the speakers of my Samsung S26 phone, but the Pill's neodymium-powered woofer brought out the true nuance of the track. It sounded booming, but not overpowering, and there was no residual tininess to be found.

There were plenty of moments where we were contemplating cards to flip over, only to hear the quiet mumbling of Chucky's cheeky voice, which felt like it was playing all around us. The louder I made the speaker, the more nuance to the audio we could hear and the more scared we got. Better yet, there were absolutely zero unwanted vibrations coming from the speaker to the table to bring us out of the spooky mindset. Which is likely thanks to the speaker's handy 20‑degree upward tilt.

We could have easily played the same sounds through my friend's TV or my phone, but the lack of that tinny, unpleasant audio helped us get absorbed into the Chucky fun. Its portability also meant it was easy to move out of the way when we needed more table space, and that alone has me set on bringing it to every board game night going forward, spooky-themed or otherwise.

I grew up trying out a ton of Bluetooth speakers and typically ignored Dr Dre's audio lineup due to its pricing. Yet I'm glad I got to finally put the Pill to the test, as its fantastic sound makes all people's comments over the years feel justified. I only wish there was a matching Pokemon bag to carry it around with, as I don't want to use my phone's speaker for anything but phone calls ever again, but also don't want to risk damaging the grill's adorable Pokemon-themed art.

This weekend I'm going camping, and you can get bet the Pokemon Beats Pill will be first on my list of things to pack. We won't be playing any spooky Chucky games as I don't want to get too frightened while hanging out in the Scottish wilderness. Yet, I'm looking forward to being able to listen to music with my friends in a quality that manages to bring out the nuance in anything and everything.

Maybe this time we'll play some actual Pokemon audio through the Pikachu and Mimikyu-printed grill to make our weekend feel more fitting. No matter what we decide, you can bet I'll be choosing this Beats Pill as my speaker of choice.

• View all Beats Pill speakers at Apple

Love high-quality audio? Check out our guides to the best gaming headsets, which include some of the best Nintendo Switch headsets to pair with your favorite Pokemon games.

I appreciate that it's not even Halloween yet, but the Pokemon Center Christmas decorations just dropped – and they're threatening some major festive cheer up in here.

I'm the sort of guy who normally prefers to get spooky season out of the way before thinking about tinsel and jingle bells, but even my willpower is being sorely tested by this collection. Ornaments, cozy clothing, pins, and knick-knacks of all sorts have just dropped, and they're so Christmassy it's got me practically humming carols. While you can get some festively-themed Poke-goodies at Amazon and other major retailers, it pales in comparison to the full Pokemon Center Christmas lineup. These goodies are exclusive to the store, and if other merch from there is any indication, these will be of a very high quality.

Because there's quite a lot to choose from (including gear from previous years), I've rounded up my favorites here. With any luck, some of these might get folded into next month's sale; while I'm mostly going to be keeping an eye on Black Friday Pokemon card deals, I know merch like this Pokemon Center Christmas gear can enjoy some major bargains toward the end of November.

Not ready for Christmas yet? This Pokemon Halloween merch is super-effective, because it's already starting to sell out.

• Browse the full Holiday collection at Pokemon Center

A new Xbox survey is asking players how they would feel about future titles being console-exclusive to Xbox, with Fallout, Hideo Kojima's Physint, and Minecraft name-dropped.

Since its massive spending spree on the likes of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda, Xbox has been a bit all over the place when it comes to exclusives. Aside from honoring exclusive deals with the likes of Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, Microsoft went all-in on being a third-party publisher for a bit there, bringing almost every one of its games to PS5. Then, with the appointment of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, the strategy changed again: Gears of War: E-Day was confirmed to be on Xbox and PC only, despite reports that its PS5 port was apparently close to completion.

And now – barring Fable, which was previously confirmed for a PS5 launch – it looks like Microsoft may be priming players for more exclusivity. As highlighted by Windows Central, some Xbox Insider members have received surveys asking about game exclusivity and where they would play the title – or if they would play it at all if it's not on PS5 or Switch 2.

These reportedly included questions about Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and the upcoming Hideo Kojima game, Physint, which Xbox Game Studios recently became the publisher of, following Sony's decision to cancel the project. Kojima himself has said he doesn't know if Physint will release on PlayStation.

However, it's the final question that is likely to raise the most eyebrows. The question asks players to imagine every Xbox game – barring Call of Duty, which Microsoft is legally required to release on other platforms until at least 2033 – was an exclusive. However, it adds "For Minecraft only, existing titles would no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles, and would not receive any new content updates."

I don't think people would be happy if Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6 were exclusive to Xbox for sure, but the idea of removing Minecraft from PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, as well as no longer giving updates to those versions, is so brazenly a bad decision that even being floated is concerning.

Minecraft on Nintendo Switch has sold over 4 million physical copies in Japan alone, and the worldwide number is likely to be much higher, while the PS4 version of the game had over 17 million players as of 2019 – and given that a native PS5 version didn't release until 2024, again, that number is likely to have far surpassed it. Obviously, it's just a hypothetical for now, but I can only imagine that taking Minecraft away from millions would have a backlash that makes complaints about Sony's killing physical games look like nothing much.

As Minecraft sells over 425 million copies and attracts 300,000 new players a day, the evergreen sandbox game is getting its first dimension in 14 years

Shigeru Ohmori has been working on Pokemon games since the original Ruby and Sapphire in 2002, and has been directing the series since Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire over a decade later. Now, still at Game Freak, he's working on something all-new in the form of a magical girl RPG that relies on real-life weather.

Ohmori wants to build "forms of expression that can only be achieved in a completely original game," as he tells Famitsu (translated by Automaton). The result is Ame Nochi Hare Onna, a free-to-play mobile RPG. You build a team of magical girls who clean up the city by taking on trash in turn-based combat – the trash, in this case, being garbage-shaped yokai spirits.

The key gimmick is that your party's powers are determined by their outfits, and outfits get dirty over time. The game is built around short gameplay sessions, requiring you to wash your outfits to use them again. They dry in real time, and the drying time is affected by the real-life weather. Clothes will dry faster on sunny days than rainy ones.

The goal was to "thoroughly explore the concept of bishojo characters" and build a game that was "firmly rooted in real life, with a sense of everyday reality." With that in mind, Ohmori says that the real-time weather tracking and core gameplay loop meshed "most beautifully."

While it's easy to see Game Freak as purely the Pokemon Studio, it's made plenty of other games over the years – many of them quite offbeat and experimental. Ohmori himself worked on underrated gems like Drill Dozer, a 2006 rumble-powered GBA platformer, and HarmoKnight, a 2013 rhythm platformer released on the 3DS eShop. With those precedents in mind, Ame Nochi Hare Onna seems like much less of an outlier.

There's no word yet on whether Ame Nochi Hare Onna will be released outside of Japan. Given the success of the likes of Genshin Impact and Umamasume, though, I think it's clear that anime girls are a global draw.

In the lead up to Pokemon Winds and Waves, check out our guide to all the best Pokemon games.

It's fine and dandy doing the Wordle daily, but if you're looking for a real challenge, there's now a Pokemon version to test your skills. Rather than trying to tease out a word, it's a randomizer for the battle against Red that caps off Gold and Silver, truly testing your mettle for pocket monsters.

The game is rather appropriately called Daily Red, and it comes from a developer called AmiBuilds. The mechanics are simple: you start it up, and it plops you atop the mountain, right before you meet Red from the first generation for a climactic endgame fight.

This time, though, your team is made up of randomly chosen monsters from the first three generations. They're all level 100 to make sure they can stack up against Red's S-tier pocket pals, and from there, it's up to you to make the win happen.

You could get lucky and have Charizard, Dragonite, and Entei and decimate your opposition, or you could get Goldeen and Caterpie and get completely rocked. It's all in the RNG, and all players get the same team, making it all about your strategies and luck in battle.

Unlike Wordle and many of its clones and contemporaries, Daily Red isn't immediately available in a browser. Instead, you download it from the developer's GitHub, then go through a short setup process to get it running, after which you play it from your internet-surfing outlet of choice.

Making it work requires a bit of tech knowledge and following some instructions. I'll be honest and the barrier to entry here could be off-putting, but once you get the game running, it's quite fun. Probably worth noting it's been vibe-coded, meaning the code was created using gen-AI.

It uses your PC's clock to ensure you get only one shot every 24 hours, and the start screen displays your win-loss ratio, reminding you of your talents every day. Seeing the stats can be brutal, but if you're going to be the best, like no one ever was, you need to be real with yourself, right?

Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald Switch ports feel all but confirmed, fans believe as new Pokemon Home update suggests more GBA games could be on the way

It can be difficult to enjoy forms of art when you know too much about the process. Once you've seen behind the curtain, it's hard to go back to just being a fan. A former developer from Naughty Dog had the same struggle for a while, but now he's able to appreciate the studio's output as an audience-member again, making him quite excited for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Speaking on Kiwi Talkz (below), Matt Radford, an ex-senior VFX artist who worked on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4, discusses getting to simply be a player of Naughty Dog's releases. "I'm definitely so far removed from Naughty Dog that I definitely will play Intergalactic and just get to have a good time," he says.

"There's no way there's not something captivating going on there," he predicts. "Of course I have my opinions, I have my thoughts – good and bad – but to be honest, I'm just so happy that the institution that is Naughty Dog is still going, and that someone is taking big risks on art like that on a really high level."

The company's batting average is certainly high, and there aren't many teams operating at such a level in the triple-A space right now. Naughty Dog has creative freedom to take big swings, and generally speaking, those swings continue to pay off.

Radford mentions that financial headwinds are more volatile right now, and you have looming questions around profitability. He points to CD Projekt Red as another example of a studio that's continually making bigger releases because each one's done well on the market. Since working on Nathan Drake's last adventure and Joel and Ellie's quest across the US, Radford had stints at Sony Santa Monica, Riot Games and Epic games, giving him a pretty rounded understanding of the industry at that scale.

"My understanding is really that Naughty Dog is just to sell Sony hardware," he points out. "The reason Naughty Dog is so wonderful is they aren't as profit-driven as other companies because they exist to be a flagship to sell the hardware. Sony makes their money on the hardware, and I think it's working."

In a time when layoffs are commonplace, Naughty Dog is one of the few places you don't hear much about in terms of potential restructuring. Whether that holds going into Intergalactic is another question.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is "testing the bounds" of what Naughty Dog is "capable of," teases The Last of Us star – "You are not ready."

A lot of change is going on in the annals of Xbox right now. The games division of Microsoft is in the midst of 3,200 layoffs and a complete restructuring, and that includes in senior management. Mojang, the company overseeing Minecraft, now has a new boss, but their background isn't strictly in game development.

Asha Sharma, CEO of Xbox, has announced that Maria Angelidou-Smith is taking on the role of Mojang CEO, replacing Kayleen Walters, who's now president of XP. That's apparently another wing of Xbox dedicated to how "how people experience our franchises beyond the games themselves" - in other words, TV and movie adaptations and licensing agreements and what not.

Considering the success of A Minecraft Movie, and the fact she's a named producer on the sequel, it makes sense for Walters to move into that role. It's mentioned Minecraft garnered over 250 licensees in her time there.

Angelidou-Smith is no stranger to positions like this, but more in social media than video games. From 2014 to 2022, she was with Meta, looking after various aspects of Facebook, firstly in app monetization, and then in the realm of Facebook Groups, Dating and the like.

Then, after stints in other industries, she took on the job of chief product officer at Reddit in November of last year. And now she's in charge of Minecraft.

"Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply," Sharma writes in an internal memo shared by The Hollywood Reporter. "We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization come together."

Sharma says Angelidou-Smith's "first order of business" is "to learn from the teams and communities that make Minecraft so special."

If you're somewhat cynical of this move, I don't blame you. This certainly looks like Microsoft's targeted someone who's more concerned about user retention, advertising, and monetization than community moderation and access.

Minecraft is a juggernaut that's resisted many of the more concerning practices you can find in something like Roblox. There's no explicit suggestion Microsoft wants to push that direction, but this changeover leaves the possibility open. We'll see what the future holds.

Former Halo art director claps back at founding Xbox member for implying 343 Industries had a "laziness" problem: "It isn't accurate"

A Lego Pokemon blind box series just leaked, and to be perfectly honest, I feel as though Lego is very specifically targeting my bank account here.

Reported by longtime leaker @got.cooped on Instagram, these Lego Pokemon blind boxes will apparently be like the Super Mario buildable figure range. These provide a random character or enemy from the Nintendo series with a mini-diorama that you build, and they tend to start from around $10 at Amazon. According to this leak, the Pokemon equivalent will use a similar approach rather than relying molded figures like the ones seen in the Iconic Trainer Moments Poké Ball at Lego.

Now, it's important to take an announcement like this with a pinch of salt. This is all unsubstantiated rumor rather than fact, after all, and we can't guarantee it'll happen. However, @got.cooped has a good track record for Lego leaks so I'm willing to at least give this the benefit of the doubt.

No matter what, I hope it's real. Those mini Mario figures are very well done, and even though they may not challenge the best Lego sets for impressiveness, they're excellent stocking-filler gifts for gamers. I don't see any reason why Pokemon wouldn't be just as good, particularly because you can have the buildable figure sat on a base representing their preferred environment (a riverbed for Magikarp, a desert for Sandshrew, etc). The series could even move through the Pokedex with each wave, going through the numbers sequentially. That way, this range could last for years.

Speaking of new kits, an iconic piece of Joker art is being made into a Lego Batman set, but fans are worried it'll haunt kids' nightmares. Plenty of models should also go on offer for this year's Black Friday Lego deals.

• See the latest Lego Pokemon deals at Amazon

Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald Switch port truthers believe they have gotten an extra bit of ammo thanks to a Pokemon Home update released today.

Last month, fans noticed that some Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire footage posted by an official Japanese Pokemon Twitter account was somewhat suspicious. Namely the footage was surprisingly crisp for a 2002 Game Boy Advance game and it lasted exactly 30 seconds – which is how long video clips saved onto a Switch console last. Given that these looked somewhat in line with the Switch versions of FireRed and LeafGreen, speculation naturally kicked off that the other Gen 3 games would join the remakes.

Today, The Pokemon Company rolled out an update for Pokemon Home which allows players to transfer their FireRed and LeafGreen monsters into the app, and then bring them forward to other games in the series – although once they leave their GBA home they won't be able to return.

However, as pointed out by a user on ResetEra, the new button added to the app's menu says "GBA games" as opposed to specifying that it's FireRed and LeafGreen, which they believe could be a hint at future ports of other GBA titles – namely, Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald.

Of course, at risk of sounding like a downer, this could mean nothing. A button labeled GBA games is far more space efficient that a button specifically namedropping FireRed and LeafGreen. That being said, given that Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen are now way higher on the list of the best-selling Pokemon games of all time thanks to the new Switch re-releases, I would be shocked if The Pokemon Company leaves the potential money of Gen 3 ports off the table.

Pokemon devs reveal magical girl "laundry game" that uses real-life weather data, and Game Freak is bringing out the big guns with its director.

The world of Pokémon merch is far bigger than the actual world of the franchise. That can be a problem in times like now, Prime Day, because finding good gifts and discounts can be quite a challenge. With today being the last day of Amazon's sales, the pressure is mounting.

But let's banish the pressure, because I've found an array of Pokémon gifts which are worth picking up. All but one of these cost under $50 at their reduced price (the other is still worth knowing about, given it's a first-time discount on a big gift), and won't disappoint the recipient. The discounts are all at Amazon (or its sibling site Woot), but I double-checked costs at rival retailers to make sure you're really getting the best discount.

You'll also want to peruse our list of the best Pokémon games, and what you need to know about the upcoming Pokémon Wind and Waves.

As rumors of a new Uncharted game being in development swirl, Nathan Drake actor Nolan North has stated that he'd "absolutely" be happy to reprise his role in a new game… "it just depends if Sony wants to make money" by developing it.

North was asked about potentially returning as the beloved Uncharted protagonist during a panel at Gamergy in Puerto Rico in late August (thanks, DomTheBomb), and showed zero hesitation.

"110 percent, absolutely," he responds. "Oh yeah. I think it would be one of the biggest games ever if they decided to do it. It just depends if Sony wants to make money."

Sony's desire to make money is certainly a popular talking point these days, between its decision to kill off physical discs for new PlayStation games starting in 2028 and its apparent u-turn on porting its single-player games to PC. Regardless, North reiterates: "I absolutely would. I try to stay in shape just in case."

He continues: "I always keep out hope. I haven't heard anything, but, you know, it is a business, and my god, can you imagine if they did? I mean, it would be the biggest [announcement in] gaming. And I don't think that's hyperbole. I think that's true."

Notably, North said all this before those recent rumors of a new Uncharted game being in the works at Naughty Dog – one that's apparently set to star Nathan Drake in some capacity, at that. It's been claimed that this new installment (which isn't a remake) will be the studio's next game after Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

If that's true, we can expect quite a wait – it was recently confirmed that Intergalactic will be getting its proper reveal at some point next year after its initial unveiling at the 2024 Game Awards.

Uncharted 4 was "a very different" game under Amy Hennig, says former Naughty Dog artist.

A new Uncharted game is reportedly in the works at Naughty Dog and is apparently set to be the studio's next game after Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Rumors have been set in motion by a new report from MP1st, which claims – according to its sources – that an all-new Uncharted is on the way (not a remake), and that it'll star Nathan Drake in some capacity, though it's not clear whether he'll be the protagonist.

Leading the project is reportedly Shaun Escayg, who previously served as lead cinematic designer on Uncharted 4 and then director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. More recently, he was the creative director of Crystal Dynamics's Marvel's Avengers.

While it's worth taking all this with a pinch of salt, the report has notably been corroborated by prominent leaker NateTheHate – best known for accurately leaking the Switch 2 reveal as well as the existence of the Star Fox and Zelda: Ocarina of Time remakes, amongst other things. Earlier this week on Twitter, the leaker hinted that he'd heard "minor details" about a project in the works from Escayg at Naughty Dog, and pressed on this on ResetEra following the publication of the MP1st report; he states that, "Yes, a new Uncharted is what I was referring to."

One part of the report that NateTheHate isn't backing up, however, is the claim that The Last of Us Part 3 is planned to come after this apparent new Uncharted game. Although Naughty Dog president Neil Druckmann reconfirmed this week that two Last of Us projects are in the works at the studio (in the "very early stages"), NateTheHate says, "I don't know anything about the future TLOU projects at this time."

Only time will tell, of course. For now, Naughty Dog's main focus is clearly Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which is set for a proper reveal sometime next year.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune "is rough around the edges," ex-Naughty Dog designer says, and "went through a whole lot of hell during development."

The Last of Us Joel actor Troy Baker has been singing the praises of Naughty Dog's next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, telling fans that they're going to have their "minds blown."

Even though it's been almost two years since Intergalactic was announced, we still know surprisingly little about it, but Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann confirmed this week that we can expect its full reveal sometime next year, so that's something. In the meantime, we'll just have to hope for the best, but according to Baker, the Last of Us studio is working on something pretty special.

"I'm excited to see Intergalactic. You guys are going to have your minds blown," Baker said during a panel at Ottawa Comiccon earlier this month, repeating, "You are not ready."

He continues, saying: "It's so good. We finally just wrapped, as you saw, the cinematics." That news was announced by Naughty Dog at the end of August, at which point it called the shoot "very ambitious" and said: "Cannot wait to show you their incredible work when the time is right!"

Baker also praises Druckmann for finding yet another "amazing" actor in Tati Gabrielle (who's playing protagonist Jordan), who he describes as a "spiritual successor" to Ashley Johnson and her portrayal of The Last of Us's Ellie.

"There is so much about Jordan and that game of Intergalactic that feels like, man, I feel all of it. I feel Uncharted, I feel The Last of Us, I feel something new," he continues. "They're testing the bounds of what that studio is capable of. And everything that I've seen, they are delivering. It's going to be incredible."

Although GQ reported shortly after Intergalactic's reveal that Baker would be part of the upcoming Naughty Dog game in some capacity, it's still not actually clear what role he plays. Clearly, all will be revealed in due course.

New Last of Us projects have stories "worth telling," Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann promises: "We wouldn't return to it unless we had something meaningful to say."

Hoping to buy Pokemon TCG Delta Reign? You're not alone, and stock is proving troublesome... particularly at a good price. Resellers and inflation due to demand have done their thing, so right now it's all about navigating those choppy waters for the best possible deal.

That's why I've set sail on those stormy seas to bring you the best offers I can dredge up from across the internet - if you want to buy Pokemon TCG Delta Reign without breaking the bank, you'll find what you're looking for here. Because I've been keeping an eye on and tracking Pokemon card availability for a long time now as part of my beat covering the best card games, I've got plenty of advice too.

Regardless of what you want, I'd advise moving quickly if you see something in stock at a not-horrendous price. These tend to get snapped up with the speed of a striking Arbok, so you'll need to be ready. After all, I doubt we'll be swimming in products and there's no chance you'll be able to buy Pokemon Delta Reign for less as part of this year's Black Friday Pokemon card deals.

Where to buy Pokemon TCG Delta Reign in the US

Hoping to buy Delta Reign? Good news! Prices seem to be coming down gradually at Walmart! This is the best place to get the set right now, though bear in mind that costs are still overinflated. Amazon also has a few options, but a couple of items have since sold out.

Walmart

Miniature Market

Amazon

Best Buy

Target

eBay

TCGPlayer

Where to buy Pokemon TCG Delta Reign in the UK

Now that the set is officially here, Amazon has finally joined the chat. You can buy Delta Reign from there, but bear in mind it's request by invitation - so you aren't guaranteed a purchase. However, if you get through, you know you'll be paying RRP rather than an inflated cost.

Amazon

Wayland Games

Magic Madhouse

Zatu Games

Smyths Toys

Argos

Where to buy other Pokemon TCG sets

Even though it's tough to buy Pokemon TCG Delta Reign, that doesn't mean all sets are off-limits. The longer an expansion is around, the more the novelty wears off... and thus, the easier it is to find in stock. Pitch Black, Chaos Rising, and beyond are more widely available as a result.

That's why I've set our dedicated software the task of rounding up the best offers below. These are updated automatically 24/7, so they'll provide up to the minute pricing.

Pokemon TCG Delta Reign FAQ

Want something to play while you wait for stock? Don't miss the best board games or the best tabletop RPGs.

• See all Pokemon TCG offers at Amazon

Minecraft is an ever-expanding franchise, and there are frequent giveaways to celebrate this fact, including some of the Minecraft Dungeons 2 codes below. Minecraft skins have always been among players' favorite ways to express themselves (outside of creative mode), and are a popular addition even in a single-player capacity. So, with the Minecraft Dungeons 2 launch, there too came some fresh customization options.

While a few of the rewards listed below are redeemed automatically once requirements are met, one is a redemption code that needs to be claimed in-game. This differs to how you would redeem codes for the Minecraft vanilla game, perhaps leading to some confusion, so here's what you need to know.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 codes

These are the Minecraft Dungeons 2 codes and rewards you can get right now:

Only one of these is an actual code, and that's the Corrupted Creeper Cape, which can sadly no longer be obtained, but can still be redeemed in-game if you were lucky enough to get one or participated in the Twitch and TikTok watch reward campaigns. If you're unsure how to do so, check out the instructions below.

Rather than actually being codes, the other rewards are claimed in-game automatically once requirements have been met.

Since there is a Minecraft Dungeons codes redemption box in-game, I'd expect to see even more rewards shared this way in the future, and I'll share them here when they arrive.

How to redeem Minecraft Dungeons 2 codes

To redeem Minecraft Dungeons 2 codes, enter the settings menu from in-game, then scroll to the bottom of the General settings menu, where you'll find the code redemption box. Enter your unique code here, hit enter or controller equivalent, and you'll be granted your rewards!

There is another Minecraft Dungeons 2 reward available, the Aurora Cape, but while the reward is for watching Dungeons 2, it's only available to claim in the vanilla game, which must instead be done here. If you try to claim your Minecraft Dungeons 2 codes here, it won't work!

While you're here, why not check out our Minecraft Dungeons 2 review, which compares it to a more grown-up ARPG, while discussing how it's also better than the first Dungeons game.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

A hyper-rare Pikachu card just sold for $8.4 million, making it the second-most expensive Pokemon card to ever hit auction.

Dubbed 'Raincoat Pikachu' by fans because it shows the electric mouse dressed up for a downpour with umbrella in hand, it's rarer than a shiny Mew; this was the result of a global competition so only 100 were ever made as a personal prize, meaning it was never sold in stores. That goes some way to explaining why this Pokemon card in particular fetched such a high price. Indeed, it's now the second-most expensive card to go to auction behind Logan Paul's Pikachu Illustrator card that sold for an eye-watering $16.4 million.

Sold on September 28 via Fanatic Collection (as spotted by Men's Journal), it was rated PSA 10 Gem Mint and earned a whopping $8,400,000 with buyer's premium. The charming Pokemon card was created by artist Fujishima in response to a 2015 competition inspired by Pokemon Art Academy for 3DS (which taught players how to draw Pokemon, unsurprisingly), and their design won under the 'Dress-Up Pikachu' category. As a prize, they received 100 officially printed versions of their card that were never made available to the public or sold anywhere. That means they're exceedingly rare even for one of the best card games.

Because of their rarity, these cards have been sold for a good amount of money before now – but never to this level. Indeed, our friends at Dexerto worked out that a version of the same card with a similar PSA 10 GEM rating sold for $19,200 back in 2025. So, why did this one balloon in value a year later? I suspect the 'Mint' addendum for the 2026 equivalent may have something to do with it; it's that much more desirable for collectors.

No matter the valuation, this card has the distinction of being downright freakin' adorable. There's something very sweet about its goofy, cheerful smile and an aesthetic that looks like it's been taken from a picture book. It certainly cheered me up this morning.

If you're excited about upcoming sets, have you seen our exclusive card reveal for Delta Reign? In the here and now, Pokemon TCG 30th Celebration looks surprisingly generous, which is great for fans in more ways than one. Hopefully that means some cards will turn up in this year's Black Friday Pokemon card deals...

• See all of the latest 30th Celebration offers at Amazon

Toem 2 is a game for nosy people, which is great news for someone like me who spends at least half their time while out and about carefully eavesdropping on other people's conversations. (Don't hate me, we've all done it.) But rather than it being a game about listening to people, Toem 2 is – like its predecessor – all about grabbing your camera and talking to every single person you meet.

Rather than making you feel like a voyeur, though, Toem 2 immediately makes you feel calm and at ease. The black-and-white hand-drawn art style is charming and will constantly surprise you as you move through each area. But, starting out Pokemon-style in your home bedroom with your nana waiting downstairs, about to put the TV on full blast, is the most wholesome start to this equally wholesome game.

Like the original Toem, you have a single end goal, which is to attend a festival for a once-in-a-lifetime event that's actually known as a toem in the game, but the bus that's going to take you there won't go direct. Instead, you find yourself taking detours through different areas, speaking to anyone you meet to see how you can be of help. As it turns out, in order to earn enough bus tokens to get to the next stop along your journey to the magical event, you're going to need to lend a hand – or a camera.

Snap, crackle, pop culture reference

Each area has a core character that you'll need to help with a larger multi-part quest through the district. This is a bit of a change from the original game, but it's a welcome one, as there's a joy in seeing these familiar faces pop up as you explore a new drama that needs your assistance. It's just another way that Toem 2 shows off its excellent writing, with the game regularly making me chuckle out loud at its unexpected silliness.

Because outside of these core companions, there are so many funny little guys and gals just waiting to be spoken to, all with some kind of problem that needs solving. Whether it's a skeleton trapped in a hanging cage that just can't remember whether they left the stove on, or a biologist that needs some fish-themed analysis doing that's so clearly another nod to Pokemon.

There's plenty of whimsy to be discovered, and you'll find yourself learning each area practically by heart as you meander back and forth across it, finding items, taking photos, and chatting with the locals. It's probably the gentlest Metroidvania-alike you're ever going to find.

It's such a great feeling when the random item or person you took a photo of earlier turns out to be plot-critical, often in hilarious ways. It's something Toem 2's very good at – the art of surprise.

A costume you found in a crate may come back later as a much-needed prop; a character you snapped because you thought they were cute might just be the key to the next quest you pick up. It's just part of its charm and clever puzzle creation.

Happy snappy

I won't lie, across its roughly four-hour playtime, Toem 2 will make you fall for it over and over again. There's such a gentle playfulness to its narrative, and even though the mechanics of taking photographs and interacting with people and the world is fairly simple, it still finds ways to surprise you.

It helps that, as with the first game, each area has a distinct visual theme and feel, from the countryside farmland vibes of Cropten to the fantasy themes of Taletorp – which I've aptly misread as Tabletop multiple times. There's not enough game time to really be bored, but developer Something We Made doesn't ever give you the option. It's delighting you at every turn.

The new core characters also give you special new camera add-ons that are unique to each area. The first area, for example, gives you a pair of scissors for snipping and cutting at things, and it's really interesting to gain another way to interact with the world than just taking pictures.

Not that taking pictures isn't really satisfying, though. You've got a cute floating drone for taking shots and a good old tripod, and just whipping out the camera is enough to entertain. The gyro lets you aim (or the right stick), and you can zoom, focus in on a point of interest (which sometimes comes in handy for the more unusual quests), and pan around the world to see what might be lurking in a corner upon closer inspection.

If you're the kind of completionist gamer that I am, you can eke extra joy out of each locale by snapping pics of the local wildlife. You'll get an extra stamp for it in your journal too, but I just love the silly little names given to the critters you'll find like the sootsprite-esque Blobnuts and sad mushroom Mopeyrelles.

The only thing that I don't enjoy about Toem 2 is having to finish it. It's one of those games that you really settle into the groove for, just to find out you're about to finish it. I would love some more of its whimsical little world and its lovable mute protagonist (side note… what is it), and hopefully the fact that this is already a sequel means we might get a part three one day.

Toem 2 was reviewed on PS5, with code provided by the publisher.

Ready to-em tackle more like this? Check out our best Switch indie games recommendations, and the hottest upcoming indie games you need to be adding to your calendar!

There's still no mining. Or crafting. But the Dungeon aspect? Well, that's going great guns. Bigger, better, yet impressively streamlined for younger players to get started, Minecraft Dungeons 2 is one of the best-made loot-based dungeon crawlers you can buy. If you're looking for classic video gamey fun, you've come to the right place.

You're thrust straight into the story in which three Illagers have opened up a portal to the Sift – an all-new dimension in the Minecraft universe. This new dimension enables the game to feature some genuinely new scenery (even if it does look a bit cellophaney, like 1960s Star Trek). It also brings time-limited, global modifiers called 'Sift Tides'. These bring harder mobs, decreased cooldown timers, or cessation of passive soul generation, affecting your magic, though it still feels the same to actually play. There are new enemies too, which is a good thing because the Overworld's mobs look way too familiar if you've played the original.

Hitting the arcade

The other genuinely new thing is the ability to jump. What do you mean, I'm scraping the barrel already? It does make a difference, allowing for some basic 3D platforming (thankfully with forgiving collision detection) and, accordingly, fun new jump attacks. Some modifiers even turn these into special moves, scorching the land ahead of you with fire, for example. It also means you can jump over some projectiles during boss fights, which makes everything feel more arcadey. It's a good thing; this is giving old school video game vibes and I love that.

The movement is super-solid with only a precious few instances of slowdown on Xbox Series X when you're at a Storm Tower, making the game feel like Minecraft Dungeons Arcade – all chunky and super-assured. It's also noticeably easier to see what's happening compared to the first game, making for clearer gameplay decisions. The action can still become overwhelming when you find yourself in the middle of a mob, but that just makes it all the more satisfying to use firebomb magic or a soul explosion to knock back a score of enemies.

Co-op can be played locally, online, or a mixture of both, but characters created as 'offline' cannot go online and vice versa. It's plausible for two players with a large disparity in character level to enjoy a game together. The game splits currency 50/50 and loot is dropped for specific players, so a newbie can't pick up a Level 100 pickaxe – they'll have to wait for their own, low level drop instead. A more experienced player may have to revive the less-experienced player more often, but it works really well. Co-op is a lot of fun as you shout to each other to heal up, or NOT EAT THE FOOD UNTIL WE NEED IT. OK?!

That said, there is so much loot on offer, you'll soon spend almost as much time in the menus equipping new weapons and armor (which now has chest, legs, and head separation for extra depth) as you will playing. You can easily spend a few minutes buying, upgrading, and enchanting (and now non-destructively disenchanting) a full set of weapons, armor, artifacts and talismans only to blast through a dungeon and have 70% of it to do again 15 minutes later.

There is a new quick inventory feature allowing players to change their gear without using the whole screen, but you'll likely take turns to do it full screen anyway because sharing the experience of equipping great gear is such a big part of the fun.

The main story rattles along nicely and is a little longer than the first game's campaign, clocking it at around 10 hours. But even though it gets a bit samey after 5 hours or so, I still wish the story lasted longer. Further side quests continue some plot lines and keep things focused, but it never quite feels as convincing once you hit endgame.

Weathering the soul storms

The biggest endgame feature is the appearance of Soul Storms, which occur in random locations and are time-limited. In these storms, you get harder mobs to beat, along with three storm towers which are real damage sponges. These are best tackled in co-op, though you can take them on solo too. Things do get a lot harder at this point, especially when prior bosses spawn in the middle of the maelstrom, and the forthcoming DLC promises even greater tests of your skills.

But with greater difficulty comes increased frustration, and you may start to lose interest if completionism or maxing out your character doesn't appeal to you. Combat also changes from pleasantly skill-centric early on to keeping your health above zero while you alternate magic attacks.

There are a few bugs and rough edges that surprised me. I got stuck in the scenery by jumping where I wasn't supposed to, forcing me to fast travel to escape, and I had far too many instances of keys disappearing and characters vanishing when they were supposed to be following me. Quitting the game and reloading always fixed the issue, respawning everything, but if you don't realize it's bugged out, you can spend quite a while wondering what you're doing wrong.

Despite its few irritations, Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a classic example of 'how the first game should have been done'. It's impressively balanced, and rewards experimentation and careful enchantments, while still feeling like a Minecraft game. There's depth there for those who seek it, but younger siblings will have just as much fun spamming the attack button and screaming when Enderman randomly shows up.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 isn't quite as clever or flashy as, say, LEGO Horizon Adventures (which is very similar to play and likely cheaper too at this point), and Diablo fans are likely to stick with Diablo 4. But there's honest fun here for any type of gamer, which is quite the achievement.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 was reviewed on Xbox Series X, with code provided by the publisher.

No need to mine for games if you want more like this. Our games like Diablo and games like Minecraft recommendation lists have plenty for you to enjoy!

The PS3's legacy may very well be the perfection of the tightly focused 10-hour story campaign. If you define it that way, then Uncharted 2: Among Thieves could claim to be the game of that generation; not the best game, but the one that is emblematic of tightly bound adventures built on the thrills of big worlds and bombastic set-pieces. Naughty Dog's matinée revival has moments of technically astounding action; a lead character capable of carrying an almost unheard-of tonal range of tension, comedy and tragedy, where comparable blockbusters do anger as one long machine-gun burst; plus it embraces ideas of storytelling and entertainment that trigger a rare investment in its cast. It is, in other words, a beautiful game that is also very good at people.

Indeed, it's accomplished at almost everything. Uncharted 2's opening displays a casual confidence of craft and an eagerness for experimentation, breaking in at the story's halfway point and reintroducing us to hero Nathan Drake with snapshot characterisation: he's battered ("That's my blood"), blithe ("That's a lot of my blood"), and, suddenly, he's upside down, a perspective yank turning a stationary train carriage into a vertiginous shaft. Drake plunges past seats and into the first of many hyperbolic translations of cinematic devices – here, the teetering mountainside vehicle, but later a moving train, the unpinned grenade, and last-gasp fingertip handholds.

There's something overtly cinematic in that opening: the formalist interruption, a trick instinctively taken from the splice-and-join of film editing; the precariousness of the train, a literal cliffhanger. And it's generally agreed there's something overtly cinematic in Uncharted 2 itself. The game is sandy adventure and sunset romance as seen down the sights of a pistol or on flickering screens since long before Indiana Jones, harking back to the time of Gunga Din. It is also the problematic culmination of Hollywood's decades-long flirtation with games in the obsessive search for synergy.

All of which is to say that Uncharted 2 not only bears highly visible influences from the movies, the basic colour of its world taken from the themes and tokens of big-screen romantic adventure, but that Naughty Dog's reverence for story might have produced the closest thing to convergence between film and games that doesn't involve a cabinet spinning a LaserDisc to create a cartoon dragon. The studio has embraced the craft of storytelling as taught by the film industry, and emerged with a new production process that devotes a sustained, expensive amount of time (the irony of that synergistic urge – there is no shortcut to convergence) to performance capture, to workshopping and rehearsal with actors on a digital soundstage.

The result is not a revolution. Uncharted 2 does not solve the inelegance of the cutscene, and still needs to interrupt itself to tell a story. And it does not broaden the corridors of that tightly focused 10-hour experience – the game is relentlessly linear, a gilded cage of invisible walls and beautifully textured boundaries. This is where Uncharted 2's cinematic-ness slides from cool observation to criticism. Is it even a game, really? It's so on-rails.

Clickety-clack, Oh crap!

Let's talk about trains, since we seem to be back on one. Walter Murch, editor of Apocalypse Now, once drew a link between the railway and film, between clickety-clack technologies that run along tracks and their shared sense of perception and mechanical possibility. It is, he said, to do with a way of seeing the world. "There is the idea of the voyage. Every voyage is a story."

This idea runs through Uncharted 2. The train wrecked and suspended in that opening is reanimated to become the major action beat of the game's second act, where it carries Drake on a journey to catch up with his own story. Consciously or not – and it's hard to think it could have been totally unintentional – Uncharted 2 has internalised one of the great symbols of cinema, one of the first objects to be filmed in Lumière's L'arrivée D'un Train En Gare De La Ciotat, scattering apocryphal audiences terrified of the onrushing engine, and the heaving iron horse central to the Western. But the train is also a symbol of this generation's great form, the focused, ten-hour single-player campaign – these rails might leave little room for deviation, but they offer a hell of a ride. This is still a game, just a different form of play, one closer to the cinema, built on spectatorship and sympathy, an act of mimesis.

When it's not being a symbol of ambition and convergence, Drake's train journey is the most astonishing few minutes of play on PS3 - and again when it released as part of the Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection on PS4. The train rattles through a jungle so apparently endless it ceases to be anything other than real, while Drake leaps, slugs and hip-fires his way from carriage to carriage, everything feeling detached and independent, dynamic and precarious.

This is something Uncharted 2 does with confounding regularity: delivers moments that are impossible to play without clocking a jolt of conspicuous technical achievement. It's there in the opening, as the camera rushes outward to reveal a cavernous drop and Himalayan scale.

It's there as Drake is hounded by a helicopter over the baking rooftops of Kathmandu, racing through capsizing buildings and into impossible landings. And it's there as a tank attacks a mountain-top village, punching through stone-stacked houses and chasing Drake along walls and up stairways with spitting rakes of machine-gun fire. Uncharted 2 emerges from Naughty Dog's conception of itself as a company. It's a company that tells stories, but also one driven by technology and a belief that technological achievement, spectacle, can be beautiful in its own right.

Not trains, but people

Ultimately, though, what makes Uncharted 2 truly remarkable is its people, who are as bright and memorable as any of the things that crash or blow up inside it. Take Tenzin the Tibetan Sherpa, who finds Drake in the snow following his train derailment and brings the injured stranger to his village in the Himalayas (and then, admittedly, helps him blow up that tank).

His wordless friendship with Drake is forged in a single level (and not even one of the game's best), as they traverse ice caverns and encounter yetis, building trust through cooperation. The relationship is inspired by Ico, PS2's fairytale of companions and castles, and went on to inform The Last of Us. It's an act of emotional play, of attachment and sympathy – and this sympathy, the game discovers, provides a more urgent motivation for gameplay than any regular power fantasy or destructive urge. When the tank arrives, it threatens Tenzin's daughter, and destroying it becomes an act of loyalty – it's not meaningless fury, but directed, nuanced outrage. This is cinematic play.

As well as mystical mountain men, Uncharted 2 also delivers on overlooked basics. The women in Drake's life are unusually formidable. Chloe, played by Claudia Black, is marked by an uncommon depth of motivation. She's not defined by her feelings towards Drake, but ambiguously attracted to him, another man and, crucially, her own best interests. She's believable, unpredictable, and dangerous. On the other hand, series mainstay Elena, played by Emily Rose, is a blonde love interest in a game about guns and endless action. But she's also sceptical and strong, and so when the series does finally bring her and Drake together romantically at the close of this game – the first didn't consider it essential – it feels earned and touching. Their relationship is a two-way street of humor and humanity, and is a greater payoff than any climactic boss battle.

At the very epicentre of Uncharted 2's achievement is Nathan Drake himself. He is not only likeable, but well liked. This is no easy thing to achieve in videogames, and it makes so many others possible. Bland heroes proliferate because of the dangerous logic that we'd rather play as polite aggregations of nothing in particular than as people who are definitely not us. Drake overflows with personality – a function of smart writing, but also, it's hard not to think, of a performance process that gives the game's actors, and Nolan North in particular, a chance to pour more of themselves into each character.

When Tenzin brings Drake back to his village, and after his recuperation, Drake wakes up and wanders through the houses, mountains on every side. As he meets Tenzin's people, the button for a melee attack becomes the button to shake hands, or to salute, or to play football with children. Just for a few moments, a square-jawed hero is capable of interacting with his surroundings by reaching out and making connections rather than swinging fists and breaking faces. And just for a moment, Nathan Drake gets to simply exist. It's so quiet in the village. He can stand and breathe. He can smile and be human.

This is to call attention to Uncharted 2's storytelling and all-round craft, rather than a suggestion that humanitarian positivism is the bedrock of acing the third-person shooter. And it's certainly not an attempt to reconcile the contradiction of this being the standout moment of a game about killing hundreds of soldiers – it can't be done, and Uncharted 2 doesn't have all of the answers. But it does have the imagination to offer us the possibility that things could be different, and it remains remarkable as a game driven by technology that succeeds on the grounds of its humanity.

This Uncharted 2: Among Thieves article was first published in issue 275 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

Minecraft's reign as the blocky king of the sandbox genre has lasted for well over a decade, but the crafty survival game is still as popular as ever. This year's Minecraft Live event revealed the game's getting its first new dimension in nearly 15 years, after selling a whopping 425 million copies altogether. Lots to mine.

That new dimension is called the Sift, a vibrant and otherworldly plane - and you'll be able to check it out in next week's ARPG, Minecraft Dungeons 2, before it eventually comes to Minecraft's Bedrock and Java editions next year. It's the game's fourth dimension, joining the Overworld, the Nether and the End.

"The Sift is beautiful, vibrant, and teeming with souls," an official blog post reads." It's also the first dimension to be added in over fourteen years. No wonder it looks so good! And it features areas like the Meadow and the Carapace." The Sift exists within Minecraft Dungeons 2's newly-interconnected world, and you'll be able to get there by jumping or otherwise stumbling into rifts that occasionally pop up.

Elsewhere during the show, we learned base Minecraft's next drop goes into icy, underground territory and brings ice caves, a whole new ice biome, calcite blocks, ice crystals and icicles. That's a lot of ice. "Icicles grow naturally on the ceiling, and the ice crystals grow on the ground and emit a soft light," the studio explains.

And, finally, Minecraft's also coming to Nintendo Switch 2 next month, on October 27.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma also revealed some eye-opening stats about the seemingly immortal block-buster. "More than 300,000 people play Minecraft for the first time on an average day," she recently tweeted. "After 17+ years and 425M+ copies sold, I love that Minecraft is still finding new players and giving longtime ones new things to discover."

9-year-old kid spends $118,000 on YouTube ads for Minecraft and Roblox videos using his dad's company credit card: "I got called into the office"

Capcom has finally revealed a new Ace Attorney game, but rather than Ace Attorney 7, it's a VR version of Dual Destinies.

This month marked 10 years since Ace Attorney's last new title out with Spirit of Justice, and to say the fanbase has gotten a bit ravenous is an understatement. Granted, the last 10 years or so have been good for the fanbase in the sense that we finally got translated versions of the Great Ace Attorney duology and Ace Attorney Investigations 2 after years, but the people want Ace Attorney 7.

Capcom has expressed its desire for Ace Attorney – alongside Mega Man and Devil May Cry – to become on par with its powerhouse series of Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter. Given Mega Man's new game was announced shortly after that comment, and there are no more Ace Attorney games left to re-release, the fabled 7 has only felt like a matter of time, with fans waiting with bated breath.

Well today is the day, Capcom has announced a new Ace Attorney game… but rather than Ace Attorney 7, it's a VR port of Ace Attorney 5 Dual Destinies. Granted, the game has been developed and published by Amanta K.K. as opposed to Capcom, but it's safe to say the fanbase isn't exactly pleased that the new release in the franchise is a VR-only version of what many consider to be the worst mainline entry in the series.

Granted, I do find that VR adaptations of existing games can result in great things, which Capcom has proven before with the Resident Evil 4 VR port, but this is more of a case of poor timing than anything else. Plus, some have pointed out there is one more Ace Attorney game (outside of the Professor Layton crossover) that could be translated, the Japan-exclusive VR game known as The VR-20 Incident.

For what it's worth, I do personally think Ace Attorney 7 is on the way. Capcom has clearly been investing in the series by translating the missing titles, and the idea that it wants it to be one of its tentpole franchises clearly means something is in the works, right? Just like with Devil May Cry… I hope.

After the success of Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Capcom has said it wants to revive more dormant series.

Amy Hennig had a plan for Uncharted 4, and it's still hard for some people to accept they'll never quite know what it was. Over 10 years later, we at least have enough scattered details from former Naughty Dog developers and self-appointed fan detectives to help us form a compelling, although incomplete, picture.

The latest insight on Amy Hennig's Uncharted 4 comes from ex-Naughty Dog visual effects artist Matt Radford, who joined the studio during Hennig's apparently tortured production of the roguish adventure. He tells Kiwi Talkz in a new interview available to Insider Gaming App Premium Plus subscribers that he remembers Hennig's game as "very different, very different" from what The Last of Us director Neil Druckmann ultimately helped ship in 2016.

"Amy's vision for the game that I saw didn't have the same characters," says Radford, explaining that protagonist Nathan Drake's older, thieving brother "Sam was the villain." We've heard this before, with Hennig herself saying in 2019 that, "There was an antagonistic element to Sam in the final version of [Uncharted 4], but it wasn't right there from the outset. So we kind of, in my story, it was a little bit more of the journey from this ghost from Drake's past being an antagonist to sort of reconciliation and reunification."

"The DNA and the core story were all there," Hennig said about Uncharted 4. "The major differences had to do with like, I was introducing the idea of Sam as the brother. But my take on it was sort of different, that it was a little bit more – I mean I wouldn't call him the antagonist in the classic sense, but it was an antagonistic force in Drake's life that he then had to reconcile."

Earlier this year, an Uncharted 4: A Thief's End dataminer Michael Kemp cleaned up some evidence of what this alternate version of the game would have looked like. Kemp, or Thekempy on YouTube, had exhumed scenes of what he said "didn't seem to be related to anything I recognized. References to levels that didn't exist, things in the story that didn't happen." There was more shipwreck exploring with Nathan's wife Elena and less gun violence. Sounds like a good day to me.

Radford recalls about the early days of Uncharted 4, which began production some time around Uncharted 3 released in 2011, "I remember we built this green light demo for Uncharted 4 and it ran at like one FPS on like a PC." He thought the game "was just like crazy scrappy back then."

"And Amy's vision seemed cool,” he added. "Like, to be honest, it seemed cool." But the visual effects artist is ultimately happy with the definitive, Druckmann version of the game, which might never enjoy the same social cachet as Amy Hennig's unreleased Uncharted 4. It was nonetheless a strong entry in a strong adventure series.

Now, Radford says, "I just want to see Amy have her comeback." He says – over 10 years later from what could have been – "You know, when are we going to get Amy's games? She's really talented." Hennig is currently working on the delayed Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra after coming up with the story concept for Forspoken, Square Enix's tedious 2023 action-RPG. But while Hennig is still trying to rebuild her name in the gaming industry, many Uncharted 4 fans just want to rebuild her game.

"This game sucks": Former Uncharted 4 dev says a mystery Naughty Dog project was torn apart by corporate, leading to threats of pulled funding and a huge leadership shake-up.

The Lego community continues to blow my mind, because someone just made Slowpoke out of a Toy Story model using no extra parts… and it isn't the first time they've built Pokemon from the most unlikely sets.

Fan creator Minute_Food_2881 is at it again; after proving that you can turn a Lego pumpkin into the Millennium Falcon, they're back with a version of Slowpoke created from Lego Lotso Huggin' Bear ($39.99 at Lego) from Toy Story 3. This isn't just a "squint and it looks a bit like them" situation, though. It's a surprisingly accurate version of the Pokemon, from its peg-like teeth to derpy, spaced-out eyes.

"How does he keep doing it," asks Powerful_Dog_6391 in the top-rated comment on the reddit thread revealing this build. Frankly, I want to know that too. Minute_Food_2881 has been turning unassuming Lego sets into something totally unexpected for years, and while they're best-known for making almost anything into a Millennium Falcon (be it Mario Kart, a 101 Dalmations puppy, or a dinosaur), they've also created a lot of Pokemon builds. They recently used a 3-in-1 Dolphin kit to make Articuno, for example, and before that it was Charmander from a pumpkin. They were even able to make numerous other Pokemon like Pinsir from Lego Eevee.

Of course, they're not the only person making cool Pokemon models out of Lego. KraftyKoopa has spent most of this year creating incredibly accurate pocket monsters, with one for each month. This includes everything from Snorlax to Bulbasaur, with upcoming builds including Mew. These are deeply impressive, and some could rival the best Lego sets in terms of accuracy.

In short, this community is way too talented. With that kind of track record, I'm excited to see what it comes up with next.

In terms of official kits, a Lego Dragon Ball set has been officially teased, and clues suggest it could feature Shenron.

• See all the latest sets at the Lego store

It's time to play "Who's that Pokemon?" again, because we've got an exclusive Pokemon card reveal for the upcoming Delta Reign set.

If I wanted to go full dad mode on you, I could say it's an 'electrifying' announcement – shocking, even. However, I'll spare you some time and cut to the chase. This Pokemon card reveal is downright beautiful, not to mention powerful... though that strength comes with a catch. Enter Raikou ex.

Illustrated by Oku (an artist whose Pokemon cards show off a painterly style and rich, vivid color), it's clear from one look that Raikou ex isn't to be trifled with. This Legendary Pokemon is charging through a gorge on the back of lightning strikes, and it feels like it's been added to a centuries-old landscape painting you'd find in some stately home. It certainly feels like a departure for one of the best card games anyway, and I think that's why it's so attention-grabbing.

That intimidating nature is reflected in its abilities, with an attack that deals a whopping 200 damage in one go. To keep things fair, there's a catch; on a tails coin flip, Raikou ex can't attack again during your next turn. Plus, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards if they defeat Raikou ex. It's a big risk, with a big reward.

Still, at least their other power might soften the blow. If you go first, 'Thunder-Clad' allows you to search the deck for an Energy card that attaches to Raikou ex on your first turn. You're not going to have this chance every game, true. But when you do, it'll get the ball rolling quickly.

Delta Reign will be available in November, so keep an eye out for this card in booster packs come launch day.

Speaking of which, it's worth watching out for pre-orders over the next few weeks. While I've not yet seen them in the wild, we can't be far off. I'd keep a very close eye on Miniature Market if you're based in the US and Amazon UK for those across the pond as a result. They tend to be reliable sources of cards at a reasonable price, in my experience. Sure, you'll find stock at Walmart and the like. But they tend to overcharge.

OK, that's enough electric-themed puns for now. I'll see myself out.

Hopefully Delta Reign will be as good to fans as the recent anniversary set; Pokemon TCG 30th Celebration looks surprisingly generous, which is great for fans in more ways than one.

• See the latest Pokemon TCG sets at Amazon

A Minecraft world could automatically beat itself – that is, kill the Ender Dragon and trigger the end scene credits – after roughly 2 billion years, according to a fascinating new experiment about the most popular survival game of all time.

For quite a while, it's technically been possible for Minecraft to play itself. To beat the game, you just have to go to The End and kill the Ender Dragon, typically by showering it with arrows after first destroying the crystals around The End that regenerate the dragon's health.

Even without a player's input, Minecraft mobs can do all of this, but with one big caveat. For this to work, the Minecraft world itself must come with an active portal to The End, as mobs can't create Eyes of Ender or place them in the portal frame to activate it. But with a 12-eye portal open by default, it's theoretically possible for random Minecraft mob behavior to kill the Ender Dragon.

YouTuber RedLogic wanted to find out how long it would take for this theory to play out. "Since this would take an impossible amount of time to happen in real Minecraft, I had to speed up the universe itself," his video description explains. "So I simulated billions of years, tracked the rarest chain reactions, and searched for the timeline where Minecraft finally beats itself."

Without billions of years and limitless hardware available, RedLogic used a Monte Carlo simulation to predict the events of a Minecraft world that spawned with a 12-eye End Portal. The video chronicling this sim is a visualization of what would happen in a real game world that actually ran for this long (specifically, in world seed -535646876083114041).

Monte Carlo sims essentially use samples of random variables to model uncertain outcomes. Through the law of large numbers – which states that with enough samples, your discovered mean approaches the true mean of an experiment – they can reasonably estimate average results through many, many models. IBM has a good, short video on the subject.

You can't run Minecraft for 2 billion years, nor can you perfectly simulate every single game action on that scale, but you can compress Minecraft mob behavior into random variables and plug them into a simulation to compute an average. This is about what RedLogic did.

This experiment hinges on an Enderman placing pumpkin blocks on snow to create Snow Golems. This is why you want that 12-eye portal to be in a snowy biome. Those golems must then move underground near the activated End Portal to aggro and detonate Creepers to destroy blocks and open a path to the portal.

From there, the Enderman must go through the portal and place blocks inside The End – with a path to the surface opened by more Creepers – to build paths for more Snow Golems. The golems in The End would fire snow at the wandering Enderman and occasionally destroy the Ender Dragon's crystals in the process. Once all the crystals are destroyed, Creepers have to go into The End and, right as the Ender Dragon flies close by, be detonated by Snow Golems to damage the dragon.

By calculating the odds of different mob behavior – for example, an Enderman moving from point A to point B, picking up a pumpkin, or moving into the Portal – you can simplify the number of variables. "Rather than calculating millions of tiny, random decisions one by one, the simulator samples how long it takes until one of those meaningful events happen," RedLogic explains in the video.

The guts of the sim are behind RedLogic's Patreon account and therefore unclear to me, but the gist is this: Minecraft mob behavior makes up our independent variables, and we can use them to chart probabilistic paths toward dependent variables like the Ender Dragon flying into a Snow Golem right as a Creeper explodes nearby. We don't have to simulate every last golem; we just need to know how the dragon, your average golem, and your average Creeper behave.

You're making sense of the infinity of time with Monte Carlo sims. Finding "the timeline where Minecraft finally beats itself" is a good way of putting it. The scale of the experiment is staggering: some 1.975 billion simulated years in, the dragon finally falls. Somewhere, Minecraft's end credits reflect off the dewy bones of a skeleton in a gamer chair.

Here are a few illustrative numbers and quotes from RedLogic:

• "The same golem wandered The End for 18 million years" after destroying one crystal before destroying another
• "After almost a quarter of a billion years, the dragon had just lost 2% of its health"
• 34,777 simulated years into the experiment, a pumpkin was transported for another 2,000 years before becoming the first Snow Golem to carve a path toward the portal
• It took 2.9 million years for a route out of the End-side portal room to open

Minecraft devs "probably would not add" the Creeper to the game today, admits Mojang CCO, because "it would be so controversial."

It seems a nice surprise could be coming from Pokemon this holiday season. Footage of Ruby or Sapphire from an official account is doing the rounds, and fans reckon it could suggest ports of the beloved games for the Nintendo Switch are on the way.

An official Japanese Pokemon account shares a short clip from the third generation of Pocket Monster games today, September 21. It shows the player character chasing around Mr. Briney, who's trying to grab Peeko-chan, his precious Wingull.

The colors are unmistakable, this is a capture from one of Ruby or Sapphire. But acknowledgement of these games by one of the franchise's social channels has people thinking we could be seeing them on Nintendo's contemporary systems soon... especially since the footage is surprisingly crisp for a GBA game, looking more like what you'd expect from the Switch versions of FireRed and LeafGreen. It's also a 30-second clip – the exact video length you get from the Switch and Switch 2's in-built capture function. Coincidence?

A number of Twitter accounts centred on news and speculation around the collectible critters are wondering what's going on here, because in typical fashion, this has come out off left field. I'm the same, because this is a very specific thing to just randomly put up.

The video looks bright and smooth enough to be part of the Switch's Game Boy Advance library. The timing is right for us to get Ruby and Sapphire if they're coming to Switch, since FireRed and LeafGreen got ported earlier this year, in March, for the property's 30th anniversary celebrations. This would round out the series' collection of mainline third-gen games, assuming that Emerald was also brought in to round out the Hoenn trio.

Likewise it'd fit with Pokopia in terms of giving us filler releases rather than something new and mainline. Pokemon Legends: Z-A arrived last year, and Wind and Waves are coming in 2027 – these will all help kill time for the next generation of pocket monster adventures.

We'll keep you informed. Of course, if these ports do arrive, we're all picking Torchic to start, right?

Pokemon devs reveal magical girl "laundry game" that uses real-life weather data, and Game Freak is bringing out the big guns with its director.

Ubisoft makes a lot more than just Assassin's Creed, but where would it be without Altaïr, Ezio, Connor, and the rest? More pertinently, what would its games look like? In the eight years since a hooded avatar first leapt from steeple to haystack, Assassin's Creed has not just become the most important line on Ubisoft's balance sheet, but also a driving influence on almost every design document that spools from its printers. Whatever the setting or central mechanic, if the company is making an open-world game, then Assassin's Creed will run deep in its DNA. And it does make a lot of open worlds.

Introduced in the first Assassin's Creed, the formula of capturing – or, in Altaïr's case, scaling – a point to fill out the map in its vicinity has become Ubisoft's calling card. Yet while the first Assassin's Creed laid foundations for the series' mechanics and its lore, it didn't make for much of a game. Its two protagonists – Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad in the past and Desmond Miles in the present – had little to say and not much of worth to do. That would improve in the second game, Altaïr making way for the immeasurably more likeable Ezio Auditore Da Firenze and Miles seeing his skills transfer back to the real world. Looking back, Assassin's Creed was the tech demo, and its direct sequel was the proof of concept. But Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was the peak and tipping point, the game where Ubisoft briefly understood what it wanted the series to be and executed it in style.

Back to the 'hood

That said, it's a hard game to go back to. Elements that once felt novel have since been reprised at least once a year in the series, and many more times throughout Ubisoft's bulging back catalogue. The law of diminishing returns holds true. What once inspired appreciation now invites cynicism; each canny design choice taken not on its merits but seen as a scrawl on a whiteboard at Ubisoft Montreal that no one ever bothered to wipe clean. Brotherhood's component parts may have been copied and pasted into other games in different genres, but once your eyes have stopped rolling, you can see that those ideas, while often borrowed, have rarely been bettered.

Take, for instance, the tutorial. Ubisoft has long struggled to elegantly explain the morass of systems within its games, and a new Assassin's Creed invariably means a ponderous opening while each little mechanic is relayed one by one. That is certainly the case here – five hours in, you're still being shown new things – but each introduction makes sense within a story moving at such a rate. And for once, Ubisoft's annual iteration offers a bonus to the player as well as the shareholder.

As the second game in the Ezio trilogy (still the only example of its kind in a series that has introduced a new protagonist with each release since Revelations), Brotherhood kicks off its tale seconds after the conclusion of Assassin's Creed 2 with a two-minute cutscene, then puts a blade in Ezio's hand in short order thereafter. He's got all his Assassin's Creed 2 endgame gear and a whopping health bar, and while it's inevitable that they will be taken away, even this cliché is handled with elegance. It's not a flashback or cataclysmic event that strips our hero of his toys and toughness, but a sex scene, a surprise Borgia attack setting Ezio running from a morning quickie half-dressed and empty-handed. Within half an hour of the disc spinning for the first time, Ezio's family seat is in ruins, his relatives either dead or dispatched to safety, and he leaves the scorched Monteriggioni countryside for the stonework sprawl of Rome to exact revenge. It makes ‘press B to crouch' look incredibly clumsy.

It's along the banks of the Tiber that Brotherhood reveals its evolution of ideas brought into life in earlier games, plus a few new notions of its own. Three games in, scaling viewpoints was already beginning to lose its lustre. Meanwhile, the first game's prerelease promise of freeform stealth had gone unfulfilled, at first asking that players spend an unacceptable amount of time sitting on benches and then, in the sequel, hiding behind the skirts of a hired group of courtesans. Brotherhood sought to fix both of these problems in one go.

While traditional viewpoints remained in abundance, many took the form of Borgia towers. These well-staffed camps and structures needed clearing out, climbing, and burning down before the map icons in the vicinity became available. Tightly wound, filled with corners and cover, these were spaces designed for flexible stealth. While Assassin's Creed has, both before and since, allowed players to get spotted and draw their swords without penalty (instafail stealth missions aside), here there was a painful consequence to being seen. The regiment's captain, who must be killed before you can claim the tower, usually bolts if you're spotted; if he escapes to his safe room, you'll have to wait until the guard rotates at dawn or dusk to try again. As well as making good on years-old promises, stripping away the Borgia's hold over Rome one flaming, collapsing tower at a time added a weighty sense of achievement to the familiar routine of uncovering the map.

There was a more profound benefit to capturing points, too. The viewpoint concept was always incongruous, asking players to accept that the tallest landmarks in a city are perfect for spying on its denizens, rather than distancing you from them. Here, removing the Borgia's influence from an area allowed Ezio to renovate and reopen a series of shuttered small businesses, each of which would pay out a small tribute every 20 minutes. It gave context to the one-button busywork and – combined with similar rebuilding work demanded by the story, such as a pub done up to give the Thieves' Guild a base of operations, or a knocking shop made over to give Ezio's mother and sister somewhere to hide – provided the tangible sense that Ezio was pushing his enemies back. It was a change for a series where progress had been measured in VIPs killed while the world around you lay unchanged.

As the Borgia guards thinned out, you began to appreciate the world. OK, most of the people in it were there only to fill the streets with walking, talking cover, but the city around them was steeped in atmosphere. Assassin's Creed's world-building is always at its best when you're dropped in a city that still stands, surrounded by architecture that still exists; in Rome, Brotherhood had a recognisable, beautiful urban sprawl that would go unmatched until Assassin's Creed Unity. A restrained, ethereal score by Jesper Kyd further added to a sense of place, to a world that felt recognisable and real but retained a sense of otherness, the strings kicking in as Ezio clambered up the side of another Roman edifice or stalked his next mark.

Ezio's influence would spread far beyond the city walls, too. The legacy of all these elements can be felt elsewhere in the Ubisoft oeuvre, but none makes the difference between the Ubisoft of then and now so clear as the titular brotherhood system. A finely made metagame in which you recruited Assassins, then sent them far and wide to further the brotherhood's influence across the continent, it reinforced the sense that you were changing the world for the better, and was a pleasant distraction in its own right. After disappearing from the series entirely for four years, it returned for Unity as a mobile companion app.

The bother of the brotherhood

What must, to the investor, seem like Ubisoft's greatest asset – a vast network of global studios that can ensure that each successful series yields a new game every year – is its biggest creative problem. That busy schedule means that by the time this year's Assassin's Creed hits shelves, work on the next will be well underway. Any lessons learned about what does, or doesn't, work will have to wait for at least 12 months. Little wonder, then, that so much of Brotherhood's magic was left behind and Assassin's Creed has become so confused. Revelations, the closing instalment of the Ezio trilogy, was seemingly made under the assumption that what players most wanted from Assassin's Creed was a Batman game, given its baffling focus on gadgetry. By the game's end, Ezio had some 150 variations on the theme of ‘bomb'. It had a tower defence system and first-person puzzle sections. It was as if ideas were blindly folded in for the sake of giving players something different to do and to hell with how it hung together.

It's been a recurring theme ever since. Assassin's Creed has leapt annually between time periods, settings and protagonists. Its worlds have become bigger but flatter, more riddled with stuff but feeling ever emptier. Ubisoft has never found a world as rich as Rome or a hero as affable as Ezio, but then none since have had to stick around long enough for it to matter. Black Flag warmed cockles (and shivered timbers), but it was a fine Pirates of the Caribbean game and a lukewarm Assassin's Creed. No matter: 12 months later, Edward Kenway was gone, players were transported across the Atlantic to Paris, and the clock wound forward by the best part of a century. Next up is Victorian London, and as appealing as that may be, Brotherhood shows that Assassin's Creed is about more than just historical tourism. It is about systems, stories and settings that work together, rather than get in each other's way. If there's still time, Ubisoft could do with looking back to 2010 and when – for the first time, but hopefully not the last – the most muddled series in videogames almost made sense.

This Assassin's Creed Brotherhood article was first published in issue 280 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

Social media has lit up over the past few days with fans sharing surprisingly good pulls from Pokemon TCG 30th Celebration, and they're not alone.

Flabbers have truly been gasted within the community, because supposedly hard-to-find cards are popping up all over the place. A quick browse through the Pokemon TCG subreddit shows a very common theme: that the new anniversary set is more than generous with its hit rate on SIR (Special Illustration Rare) cards. I've seen reports of three Mewtwo SIR cards drawn one after another, for example, not to mention the new effect Mew ex card alongside a sought-after Pikachu ex via reddit. While I didn't initially want to jump to conclusions, the volume of posts like these makes me think Pokemon TCG 30th Celebration is pulling an Oprah with "you get a rare, you get a rare, and you get a rare." That's really encouraging for fans who struggle to pick up packs at all thanks to resellers snapping up more than their fair share of products.

"From what I’ve seen so far the hit rates seem absurd," writes SkeettheVandelBuster on a thread appropriately titled 'The hit rates are cranked.' "Hope that equates to dirt cheap singles!"

Judging by how lucky fans have been getting, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. And honestly, it'd be a very good thing if it was. For many, the TCG is little more than a rat race where sellers attempt to shift high-value cards for as much money as possible. That kind of attitude drains oxygen from the room; Pokemon stops being a game and becomes coldly transactional. Indeed, Pokemon card fans seem to agree that card grading culture sucks and makes the hobby "a lot less enjoyable." However, if there are loads of rare cards circulating, their value radically decreases because there's no demand. It nips the whole thing in the bud.

It's a small victory, yes, but those can be in short supply right now. I'll take it.

Have you managed to pick up the set yet? If you're still on the lookout, check our guide on where to buy Pokemon TCG 30th Celebration.

For more to play, why not check out the best card games or the best board games?

• See all of the latest 30th Celebration offers at Amazon

The 9-year-old boy behind YouTube channel Mighty Mike Plays has allegedly been forced to make some budget revisions after his dad noticed $118,000 in charges on his company credit card, which, the dad claims, was used without his knowledge to promote Minecraft, Roblox, and other Let's Play videos in comically long advertisements.

An increasingly viral video titled "Message from Dad...Mighty Mike Plays is Over" sees an exhausted father take the microphone to explain what happened here. Now ranked seventh on YouTube gaming trends, the video has gained nearly 400,000 views in a day.

On August 7, Mighty Mike (as I'll call him) began uploading videos, mostly from Roblox but with an occasional Minecraft snippet. As the dad, Dave, explains, the videos didn't get much traction, as you'd expect of the hobbyist clips of a kid thrown into a sea of Roblox. So, Dave says Mighty Mike, likely eager to stand among the YouTubers his generation adores, asked about ways to reach more people.

This led to a small advertisement campaign for the Mighty Mike channel: $20 just to get his videos in front of some eyeballs via YouTube ads. Unbeknownst to Dave, his payment and login information were saved to the Mighty Mike YouTube account, granting his son access to a unified Google account linked to a credit card.

That payment information, tied to Dave's business credit card, was then used by Mighty Mike to push Minecraft video ads in front of hundreds of thousands of people. The ads appear to have included a 34-minute video in its entirety.

You might be wondering how this wasn't caught sooner, how a parent could leave a credit card in the hands of a Roblox-happy kid, or whether this whole thing might be a (successful) bid for virality to drum up the channel. How did the company card get folded into this? Why would you ever use a company card on this account? How did the company, payment controllers, bank, and YouTube overlook what looks to be weeks of blatant fraud? Is Dave just an AI-generated voice?

There's reasonable doubt here, but this wouldn't be the first time a child spent a fortune online while their parent wasn't looking, and there is evidence orbiting this case. A separate video from NeverMyFault, a Minecraft YouTuber with 2.1 million subscribers, was uploaded several days ago. It captures one of these Might Mike video ads in the wild, lending credence to this whole arc. "It's just a kid playing Minecraft for 30 minutes straight," NeverMyFault says. This, in turn, inspired a response video from Mighty Mike.

Several Minecraft videos on Mighty Mike Plays do have unnaturally high view counts for such a fresh, amateur channel. Some of those views were surely a knock-on effect from this newfound virality, but the view spike is centered around three videos: "Minecraft part 1 {new series}," "Minecraft ultra starter guide," and "Minecraft Hardcore part 1 wait for end."

"Minecraft part 1 {new series}" is 34 minutes long and was the target of the wholesale ad shown in NeverMyFault's video. The comments on Mighty Mike's video are filled with users saying they found it through an ad, and I doubt Mighty Mike has the kind of pull to enlist a massive network of bot accounts.

"Apparently my son has been running some high-budget campaigns on YouTube that I was pretty much unaware of," says Dave.

"We just thought he was having fun, playing video games, uploading them to YouTube," he continues. "But basically, today I got called into the office at work. I walk in and we got the corporate manager, we got people from finance. They pull up a laptop, show me some tables on the screen, and basically ask me to explain why there's $118,000 missing from the company card that was assigned to me."

Dave's comments suggest he did intentionally use his company card for that first ad, limited campaign: "I put in the card information myself. Figured that was that. End of story. What I didn't think about, not even for a second, was that saving my company's card meant it was just going to sit there afterward, ready to go, pretty much available anytime he opened an app on his own."

The dad says the situation is nowhere near as funny when it's happening to you, but he stresses he isn't blaming his son for just doing 9-year-old things. "He didn't fully understand what a company card meant or that a large number on the screen represented real money," he says.

NeverMyFault estimated that one Mighty Mike Minecraft ad could run upwards of $6,000. "Not quite, brother," says Dave. "Six figures."

Nevertheless, "this is not a haha funny story, everything worked out fine kind of situation," Dave adds. "I mean, not yet at least. There's a real, genuine chance that I end up personally having to pay some of that, or all of that, back out of my pocket." This, you can imagine, would be a crushing expense.

While Dave sorts this out, he says Mighty Mike will be pausing his burgeoning YouTube career, and probably "mowing lawns until he's 18" to help pay for this.

He also says the magic words: "Moving forward, for anyone who's been asking in the comments already, we're going to set up some real, actual parental controls, spending caps, no more saved payment information on any accounts."

The next Minecraft update, Wilderness Bound 26.3, is here.

Black tentacles writhe beneath a sundering sky as I look out of the train window in Dreadline Express. It's one of the games I was most eager to play at Gamescom 2026: Described on its Steam page as a "psychological horror Metroidbrainia" where deckbuilding mechanics shape your storyline, it sounded like my kind of weird straight off the bat.

The deckbuilding in question comes in the form of cards I collect by observing the world around me. Interacting with objects in my cabin after awakening with little memory of my character's past, I slowly piece together my own backstory as well as what has happened to make this the last human train in existence. Think Monster Train, but instead of roguelike combat, the cards help me contend with narrative choices.

Story time

Dreadline Express is the creation of Czech solo dev Dave Konecny, who sits by my side as I get to grips with his creepy dystopia.

He explains how the cards work, each representing the gaining of knowledge about a particular element of the world, from the train itself to the people on it. Each new card discovered gets added to my card album, which is separated into topics.

The trick is to add specific cards to my hand to use them to bypass dialogue checks or other barriers to my adventure, such as locked doors or items I can't quite make sense of just yet.

For example, striking up a conversation with someone for the first time might have the yellow-eyed NPC remarking distastefully upon how rude it is not to introduce myself first. But, equipping my personal card and playing it before I start the conversation allows me to progress, and can result in a new finding being added to my card collection.

I can swap cards into my hand at will, testing whether a new combination might work in a particular conversation by keeping an eye on the text above each character's head – "tell them about your family," it might read, or "ask about the cult" for example. This indicates when a combination might open up new lines of inquiry or reveal narrative threads for me to pick at later down the line.

But, before I can even go about chatting with my fellow Dreadline Express travelers, I'm summoned to the Train Conductor's office. He tells me that I have been chosen to help decide upon a suitable sacrifice, without which the train cannot progress to its as-yet-unknown destination. This would result in the deaths of everyone on board, I'm told. Is it not better to sacrifice one for the good of the many?

Card-core

I don't have much say in the matter, not even after equipping my personal card and those of my family in an attempt to plead mercy.

It's time to head into the cabin and converse with the other passengers, keeping it zipped about the fact that I'm actually sussing out which of them deserves to die the most. Choosing to help one might result in another's demise, I'm told by Konecny. My job is to choose which characters' stories interest me the most and figure out which configuration of cards leads me further down the rabbit hole.

This grim premise is matched by an equally grim setting. The train is a gloomy place shot through with bright bolts of color, the contrasting light and darkness making it all the creepier to explore. It's also incredibly claustrophobic in here, all dimly-lit corridors flickering in and out of focus, orange-yellow lanterns swaying rhythmically overhead.

Somehow, Dreadline Express is an unexpectedly cozy experience. Everything is text-on-screen rather than voice-acted, and as I flip through my card album to study each description or click through NPC dialogue, I feel like I'm reading a leather-bound book in the warm candlelight of a library.

I only get to play a short 25 minutes of Dreadline Express, but I can already see its genius. As a narrative Metroidvania involving backtracking, card synergy, and a lot of experimentation, it's clear that no two stories on this mysterious journey will play out the same. The game's October 2026 release date is right around the corner, even if a precise date has yet to be given by the publisher just yet, and I'll be right there on the platform waiting to board and uncover all the secrets I might have missed. Including, hopefully, where this blasted train is speeding off to in the first place.

Dreading picking out your next game to play? Our best mystery games give you more to solve, while our best horror games will haunt you.

Game Freak has announced a new laundry-based mobile game with Pokemon director Shigeru Ohmori leading this project.

Obviously, Game Freak is best known for the Pokemon series, and until the recent release of Beast of Reincarnation, I wouldn't have been shocked if many people just didn't know the studio regularly releases games outside the franchise. For console releases, these usually manifest as smaller titles like HarmoKnight, Little Town Hero, and Tembo the Badass Elephant, but, as of late, the studio has released mobile games fairly frequently.

And this week it was revealed what's next for the studio before Pokemon Winds and Waves releases next year, with the announcement of "Ame no Chi Hare Onna." The game – co-developed by Chronogate – is a free-to-play mobile game for iOS and Android in Japan, described as a "laundry game." It's directed by Ohmori, who has been the lead director of the Pokemon series since Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire over a decade ago.

The title is set in modern-day Japan and follows Hare Onna and Kumorin, who can harness the weather and turn it into magic. This aspect is central to the game as the title is set to use real-world weather data as part of the gameplay loop. Granted, I'm not quite sure what that gameplay loop is right now, but thankfully there's more info revealed this week with a "Hare Onna Club Meeting" stream, as well as news at Tokyo Game Show.

But for now, you can watch the teaser trailer, which, if I didn't have the context, I would assume is the opening of a new anime series. But it's been forever since the Hideo Kojima-produced GBA title Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand released, so it's about time we had more weather-based games come out.

Pokemon Center cancels countless reseller orders, but TCG fans seem to have been burned as well.

The Legend of Zelda is a video game as ritual. It's enlivened by ingenious variations from one game to the next, but Nintendo's adventures in the land of Hyrule remain absorbed in the pleasures of careful repetition. These games are curated as much as they are designed; they're gardens rather than wildernesses. And so, at the end of Breath of the Wild, the hero in green defeats Ganon, as he always does.

But wait. This is not quite accurate. At the end of Breath of the Wild - delivered via DLC - Link, the medieval adventurer, gets a motorbike. That was how this particular Zelda ended. And so that was the point at which Nintendo's designers had to decide: what comes next?

It's still hard to know what to make of that parting gift. Noisy, gravel-spitting, rebellious – a motorbike would be unthinkable in any other Zelda game. But then the very idea of DLC would be unthinkable too. How could any of these intricate clockwork worlds have room for even a single additional cog?

This was Breath of the Wild, though, the game that stripped away decades of gadgets and structural rhythms. Link may have defeated Ganon, but much of the rest of the tradition was suddenly scrambled. No more predictable plot beats. No more polite trek from one dungeon to the next, growing more powerful with each step.

Here instead was an open-world Hyrule where the dungeons were largely secondary to the one-shot puzzle or combat Shrines scattered across the earth like a dusting of sugar on a pie. Here was a world where weapons degraded, where beloved horses could be lost forever, and where that familiar trickle of cherished items – the boomerang, the hookshot – was replaced with a handful of new powers granted at the start, and which the game would then rely upon for all its subsequent fun.

What did this mean? Up until now, Zelda had been about containment. The first game was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood cave explorations, certainly, but it was born in a moment in which the designer was opening and closing his desk drawers and imagining a garden snug within each. Zelda offers adventuring, but always within safe boundaries.

It's dangerous to go open-world

This approach lasted until Breath of the Wild, which left its players startled, unmoored. Then came the motorbike, and then things took a truly bizarre turn. Two years after the release of Breath of the Wild, it was revealed that the follow-up, Tears of the Kingdom, would reuse the same map and the same structure of Shrines, swapping out the older game's powers but otherwise offering what seemed to be more of the same. What should we make of this? Was all that reinvention just a recalibration, and would we now be back to the business of repetition and ritual again?

Tears of the Kingdom's answer to this question is fascinating, and it takes a while to become clear. On the surface, Link's latest adventure follows a traditional approach to sequels: the stuff you loved, expanded and refined. More Shrines, new powers, another, grander threat to Hyrule. But beware that phrase ‘on the surface'. Underground, Tears of the Kingdom is every bit as wilful and singular as the game it builds upon. Maybe even more so.

Trailers for Tears of the Kingdom at first suggested horror and then sun-baked, sky-minded wonder. You would explore Hyrule, but also an archipelago of ingeniously crafted islands floating overhead. This felt like a sensible approach, but there was a lingering strangeness in the trailers that invited conspiracy theories. Were we really playing as Link? Was this really Hyrule once more? Could things be as simple as they seemed?

Within this online chatter, the dialogue that has dogged almost all Zeldas continued. Since the 8bit days, each new Zelda game has been forced into a conversation with all the others: what's new, what isn't, what are the main reference points? Maybe Tears of the Kingdom was simply a chance for the ground to settle after Breath of the Wild. There's still a princess, a young hero, a landscape that extends to the rosy horizon. But there's something else, too. Something waiting beneath it all.

Something lurking down below

In retrospect, those new powers were an early clue to the true spirit of Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild offered you ways to engage with the game's physics and bodge your own solutions to the challenges you were presented with. At heart, its powers were abilities designed for manipulating in-game objects in thoughtful ways. They opened up a new, more expressive way of playing, driven by everything from mechanical curiosity to bored tinkering.

By Tears of the Kingdom, though, the powers have become a cross between real-world design tools and explicit hacks. Making use of Ultrahand, Fuse and Ascend, you can craft complex machines and ridiculous weapons, or slip through Hyrule's hidden geometries. Aren't these options that come from a sense of polite frustration with what's come before? Aren't these tools enabling a form of escape?

These powers, pushing at the boundaries of everything from the way the world is created to the way a puzzle can be solved, suggest that the problem with Zelda wasn't that it was becoming familiar, because it had traded in familiarity since the SNES. The problem was that its familiarity could make it slightly airless. That's a hard problem to solve. And so Tears of the Kingdom turned its focus somewhere entirely new, on the game's unseen bedrock, and it built something astounding down there. Something entirely unexpected.

Welcome to the Depths, the underside of Hyrule, far beneath the floating sky islands waiting to be neatly solved, far beneath the grass and sands of the open world itself. Accessed via ugly red-rimmed tears in the earth, the Depths are a vast underworld of darkness and danger. If it's hard not to feel that recent Zeldas are the work of a talented team that is quietly weary of the baggage Zelda brings, the Depths are a perfect response.

Granted, the series is no stranger to parallel worlds, yet the Depths remain very different from the puzzle-piece dimensions of Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Those were precise additions, printed circuits that slotted cleanly into place. The Depths connect with the land above them, but they're also filled with a sense of chaos, of being half-complete. They're pitch-black and claustrophobic and, tellingly for a Zelda game, they're frequently optional.

Even so, it feels like these spaces were crucial to the people who made them. Why? Because this is the place where this Zelda's eternal conversation with other Zeldas ceases. Immediacy. The chatter and speculation falls silent, and you are left to the unfolding moment.

What a moment. Deep in theatrical murk, the air around you feels thick and treacherous and alive with adventure. There's no vista to draw your eye with distractions, nothing up ahead to plan an idle five minutes around. Instead, you're exploring in order to survive, working to unlock a network of scattered Lightroots, treetrunk nodes that reach down from the ceiling. Trigger them and you get a pool of light and a matching pool of illuminated map. You get fast travel, the slightest sense of your bearings, and the feeling that you're reclaiming a little of this terrifying space.

There's a puzzle down here, and it leads to a useful reward, but for once in a Zelda adventure it's hard to focus on because you're so thoroughly stuck in the present. With the lights off, the landscape ceases to be earth and slopes and trees, instead becoming something mysterious, almost a form of enemy as it occludes the horizon. Actually, forget the idea of a horizon: everything seems to be looming close, tangling underfoot.

Embrace the depths

Life feels clumsy and precarious in the dark. With the lights on, it's often even worse. With crimson pools of heart-sapping Gloom splattered across the ground and up the walls, this is Hyrule as crime scene. There's something gleefully cruel to the design itself: all alone, resources dwindling, unseen enemies pacing around you. Zelda has always made you feel like you're walking in the footsteps of the designers, perhaps to a fault. No more. In the Depths, the designers seem to have moved on far ahead, and they remain out of reach. Instead you must light your own path, all thoughts of the landscape above forgotten.

Endless jostling horror! But it's almost always a choice for you. Above the Depths there's still a story of rescue and reclaiming to be had, albeit one of the oddest the series has ever told. Ancient evil can still be defeated and the land saved. More crucially, Link's story up there is still built of moments of kindness as he explores Hyrule, solving strangers' problems.

But the Depths, that huge, unprecedented, non-understandable id, are down there all the while. Optional or not, it's theme-stating on a geological scale. The Depths are meant to destabilise. Here, at the very bedrock of the game that every Zelda team has to make, is the game they seem to have actually wanted to make this time.

The inchoate nature of the Depths suggests the designers were following their own path in search of what a Zelda game could be, instead of what it should be. And so Tears of the Kingdom advances the eternal conversation about Zelda and ritual and repetition not by upending things like Breath of the Wild, but by having the courage to ignore the conversation entirely. Down here, a new route forward takes shape, one Lightroot at a time. In the shifting darkness, Tears of the Kingdom opens its eyes.

This Tears of the Kingdom article was first published in issue 400 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

Pokemon can't stop outdoing itself. It keeps setting new records across its profit, having already made $3.4 billion in net sales so far in 2026.

That number is a 29% increase from last year, according to a June report from Japan game industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto. The figure was recently republished by Japanese news site Denfaminico Gamer, which game update account Genki translated for a September 8 post that explains, "The Pokémon Company sales revenue has increased by 4.4 times in the last 5 years."

"In fiscal year 2026 sales reached 531 billion yen ($3.4 billion) up from 120 billion yen ($769M) in fiscal year 2021," Genki says based on Denfaminico Gamer's report. Machine translation suggests Denfaminico Gamer also notes that The Pokemon Company has increased its net income by 13.6 times since 2018, and it's projected to earn more than 120 billion yen (about $770 million) at the end of the 2026 fiscal year – an explosive increase from 8.8 million yen in 2018.

These money bags are probably at least partly a gift from major 2026 hits like Pokemon Pokopia, which sold five million copies only five months after its launch, and Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen re-releases for Switch, whose four million sold copies solidified the GBA classic as one of the best-selling Pokemon games ever.

It's all flattering, but Toto says on Twitter that The Pokemon Company is "very likely not happy [these stats] are out there." Kanpō, the Japanese government's gazette, reports them automatically, despite The Pokemon Company being privately held. "Ironically," Toto adds, "we would not get this data if TPC was integrated into Nintendo as a studio (like Kadokawa does not reveal From's data separately)."

But The Pokemon Company has nothing to be shy about. It's consistently growing with every new release – which will hopefully include Pokemon Winds and Waves one day. Though, The Pokemon Company has earned the right to take too long.

Pokemon Center cancels countless reseller orders, but TCG fans seem to have been burned as well.

It's a swings-and-roundabouts kinda day, because the Pokemon Center seems to be cancelling countless reseller/bot orders… but genuine fans may have been caught up in the Pokemon card crackdown too.

Social media is abuzz today with news that bot purchases from the official Pokemon Center store have been automatically shut down. Indeed, I've already seen numerous screengrabs of emails reading "your order has been cancelled." Considering how much of a scourge resellers are for fans of the best card games, this is cause for celebration. (It's near impossible to buy Pokemon TCG 30th Celebration right now because they keep scooping up items to flog at a higher price, with Miniature Market being one of the few places I've seen that isn't absurdly inflated.) However, there are also reports that innocent fans are being burned as well. I've seen just as many complaints that normal Pokemon card orders are being swept up in the cancellation spree.

The where-to-buy account Poke Signals reported on Twitter/X that "Pokemon Center woke up and chose violence! THOUSANDS of bot orders in a gigantic wave have just been cancelled." This was posted with an accompanying screenshot, which was quickly picked up on reddit where the story is fast approaching 4K upvotes. Unfortunately, both threads are full of comments from fans who claim that their orders have been stopped too.

It doesn't seem to be an isolated incident. Reddit's Pokemon TCG thread are full of these stories as well – I scrolled for thirty seconds and found half a dozen. The response is usually the same; the person in question only bought one of an item, and it was all under one account (resellers often use multiple accounts and cards to sneakily get as many products as possible). We obviously can't tell for certain whether these reports are genuine, but the sheer number of them makes me think it's a legitimate problem.

So, what's happening here? The community seems to agree it's one of two things; either a small number of fans are collateral damage in a new push to deter resellers, or the Pokemon Center oversold so is having to cancel orders. Neither is particularly great.

I've reached out to The Pokemon Company to learn more, and will update this story if/when I get a response.

In other card game news, Magic: The Gathering's head designer promises that an MTG Harry Potter set is "very unlikely."

• See all of the current 30th Celebration offers at Amazon

Following one Pokemon Champions lead's suggestion that the RPG series' turn-based combat could see more changes over time, another co-director has doubled down on the idea that the company's new home of competitive battling will allow for that traditional system to be "preserved" forever.

Although Pokemon has experimented more with its battle system in recent years – with Pokemon Legends: Arceus and Z-A offering variations between the former's Strong and Agile-style moves and the latter's real-time combat – the main generational releases and remakes (see the likes of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl) have stuck closely to the turn-based format. However, Champions co-director Kazumasa Iwao recently noted that "there is the possibility that this rule could change little by little."

He went on to say that Game Freak wants to "challenge ourselves by doing new things" – raising the question of what battle system could be planned for Pokemon Winds and Waves – before adding that the development of Champions began with the idea that "it would be good to put the battle system we've constructed into one game that you can keep playing." Now, in an interview with VGC, fellow co-director Masaaki Hoshino has reiterated this concept.

Noting that he loves Pokemon battles to the point that they're "part of the reason why I joined The Pokemon Company" in the first place, Hoshino says: "I would love to keep turn-based battles around like forever, regardless of other Pokemon battle styles out there. From that standpoint, I believe that as long as Pokemon Champions is around, turn-based battles will be kind of preserved and will continue forever."

"Forever" is a word that keeps coming up when it comes to Pokemon Champions. In a group interview with Hoshino attended by GamesRadar+ earlier this year, the lead stated that "we're planning to keep Pokemon Champions going far into the future – basically forever, as long as the Pokemon series is continuing." Now that Champions is the game that official VGC tournaments are set to take place in at events such as the Pokemon World Championships, this is more than a PvP spin-off; it's the lifeblood of the competitive scene, so I certainly hope this is the case.

Pokemon Gold and Silver keep getting referenced by official accounts, and I'm willing myself to believe the classic DS remakes are coming to Switch.

Mega Sharpedo ex in Pokemon TCG Pocket has been a rising star for its rapid energy generation and strong early game, designed to disrupt enemy strategies while speeding up your own in the same attack. For this reason Sharpedo has been hanging around the meta for a while, but it's only now that we've seen it rise to previously unmatched levels when paired with the Wild Swing Gyarados and ever-reliable Chien-Pao.

For more deck builds, find out the best decks in Pokemon TCG Pocket here!

Best Mega Sharpedo ex deck build in Pokemon TCGP

To make the best Sharpedo deck in Pokemon TCG Pocket, use the following build:

• Magikarp (Wisdom of Sea and Sky) x2
• Gyarados (Wisdom of Sea and Sky) x2
• Carvanha (Ruler of the Skies) x2
• Mega Sharpedo ex x2
• Chien Pao x1
• Mantyke x2
• Poke Ball x1
• Copycat x1
• Lisia x2
• Professor's Research x2
• Training Area x1
• Wallace x2

Energy: Water

This deck is all about quick deployment and building up to Stage 1 ASAP, using Lisia to draw both Carvanha and Magikarp and get them on the field, then using Wallace or card draws to evolve them. Once that's set up, you use Sharpedo to come out as your early assault, disrupting your opponents, at the same time building up for Gyarados to do up to 140 damage with its Wild Swing attack.

Not only that, but Wild Swing can be used to discard damaged Pokemon that might otherwise be a weak point. If Sharpedo is badly hurt, you can deny your opponent the Cyrus-drawn victory by having Gyarados send it to the discard pile.

• Pros
  • Incredibly disruptive early game
  • Chien-Pao remains incredibly strong
  • Solid energy generation across the board
• Cons
  • Electric decks are a common weakness
  • Gyarados can only really be used for major damage twice at most

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission

One of the most unique things about Pokemon has always been the ability to transfer your pocket monsters between different hardware generations and across 30 years of games. Now, with Pokemon Bank's impending shutdown next year, one modder has created a working adapter to move creatures from the GBA to the Switch.

The Pokemon Company recently announced that Pokemon Bank is ending service on February 26, 2027. That means several life-long Pokemons could be permanently stranded on the Nintendo 3DS in a few months time - five Pokemon will also be completely unobtainable - but not if modders have anything to say about it.

On Twitter, modder and game dev Drewworks showed off their very impressive homebrew solution in the form of a working GBA-to-Switch trade adapter. "Still plenty of work ahead, but seeing a real GBA communicate and trade with the Switch is pretty incredible," the modder writes. (Good spot, GoNintendo.)

The video above even shows the GBA actively interacting with a Switch 2 console, while Drewworks trades creatures across two different generations of Nintendo hardware. That one random Pokemon NPC was right, technology is incredible.

Cooking up a DIY GBA-to-Switch adapter won't be an easy solution for most players who want to keep bringing older Pokemons into the modern era, of course, but I imagine quite a few hobbyist modders might jump aboard the trend in the coming months.

In other news, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen's Switch ports will become compatible with Pokemon HOME next year as well. Pokemon Winds and Waves is also set to come out sometime in 2027.

Pokemon Winds and Waves might not have turn-based battles as Game Freak veteran hints the combat system "could change" thanks to Pokemon Champions

About Fishing is one of those Gamescom demos I absolutely love – low pressure, in-the-moment stakes, and getting to laugh off my terrible depth perception with the kindly PR who is too polite to tell me I'm awful.

I'm a young woman standing on a pixelated beach. Staring out at the calming grey-green waves, fishing rod in hand, a short on-screen tutorial walks me through the basics before leaving me to my own devices. The mechanics are all about physics and mouse precision, meaning I'm already out of my depth. Yet there's something meditative about my persistent failures.

Maybe my mouse is too sensitive? Maybe this game just isn't for me! But the frustration that usually builds when I find myself sucking at a cool new game never surfaces during my half-hour demo. Rather, I find myself calmed by my own lack of skill, determined to focus and learn how to slow down. I'm sure patience will come in handy later on in the story, when its murder mystery narrative starts to unfold. For now, though, I'm getting a handle on my own nerves and experiencing one of the most visually interesting games on my schedule this year.

Hook, line, sinker

Fishing is a core mechanic in About Fishing. Holding the right mouse button to aim my hook before sweeping my hand in a semicircle, releasing the button, and casting the line… It's a precise art, I tell you.

My headcanon is that my character, being on the younger side, is probably not too great a fisherwoman herself. After catching my first scaly pal (it takes me at least 10 minutes), I carry the trophy further down the scuzzy, lo-fi beach to where an older gentleman reclines on a chair. He turns to speak to me, and his wizened face looks distinctly familiar. Is that…. Former U.S. president George Bush?

No, it's not. But About Fishing does faces brilliantly despite its polygonal PS1-esque graphics. All the faces are those of real actors, I'm told by one of the publisher's representatives, each scanned into the game. Including, somehow unsurprisingly, a cameo from none other than Ben Starr of Final Fantasy 16, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and far too many other new games to count (go, boy, go!). It's not quite LA Noire levels of uncanny realism, but I have to admit – it looks pretty darn cool.

The older man explains how fishing works. I need to be patient, he says, and choose my targets wisely. It's here I get an opportunity to fine-tune my talents. Over-shooting a target is a good thing because I can whack the left mouse button to drop the line early, which is useful if I've already spied a fishy friend to pick on. The underwater camera comes in handy for this, giving a beneath-the-waves view of the creatures in a given spot.

Reel small fish

I try my best to hound one specific fish, who seems entirely disinterested in my line. It's not until I rotate my mouse a little to gauge the difference between the fish and my hook that I see how far away I've landed from it.

This is my main problem with About Fishing: the fishies are lethargic, unwilling to move too far towards the hook, so I need to land within a certain hitbox of sorts to catch their eye.

I try my luck with a shoal of fish hiding behind a rock, figuring that numbers would surely be on my side. But even after I get a bite, I lack the dexterity to flick my hook around said massive rock. The line turns red with stress and eventually breaks, leading to the old man butting in with a helpful quip about how to avoid that happening again. Turning my mouse to angle a fish's head toward my character is one thing, but doing so from behind a boulder? Utterly impossible.

And here I sit for the remainder of my session. It's a slow, methodical process, one in which I find equal parts glee, annoyance, and relaxation. Fans of fishing minigames in the best RPGs will find ample amounts of all three in About Fishing's tactile mechanics – I only wish I'd gotten far enough to see more of its mysterious underbelly emerge from the gloomy depths. Still, this tasty morsel is enough to pique my interest. And, just maybe, set me off on a journey toward some sort of inner peace.

Check out some of the other best fishing games out there if you're keen to dip beneath the surface and catch your own dinner.

Viz Media's new Pokemon: 24-Movie Collection is a Blu-ray behemoth. The collection was announced on the brand's X (Twitter) page today and encompasses every single Pokemon movie on a set of 16 Blu-ray discs. From Pokemon the First Movie and even its CGI remake, Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution, you're getting all of the franchise's theatrical outings in one complete set, which is a win for physical media and Pokemon fans alike.

Yet owning this limited-edition Blu-ray collection, which doesn't launch until November 14, 2026, will cost you the privilege of a whopping $399.99 at Amazon. I wish I were telling a Snorlax-sized fib, but the Amazon exclusive collection is sitting at the retailer for its $400 MSRP, although in a cute Poke Ball-shaped case, might I add. It's available to pre-order starting today if you're eager to own the franchise's movie history in one complete set. However, I'm going to need Viz Media to divulge more of the Blu-ray's contents before I lay down my savings in an effort to collect and watch them all.

Viz Media has been pretty sparse with the details of its new Pokemon: 24-Movie Collection so far. The short item description on US Amazon reads that the "explosive 24-movie collection" allows you to follow Ash and friends' adventures from "the origins of Mewtwo in Pokémon: The First Movie to the Unova region in Pokémon Black & White, leading finally to the deep Forest of Okoya." Yet we haven't got a full movie list to see exactly what's in store.

If I were about to drop almost a Nintendo Switch 2's cost equivalent on a complete Pokemon movie set, I'd hope that this would also include the franchise live-action outing, Detective Pikachu, but there's no mention of it. I fear this set is more tailored for the anime fans, as checking the official Pokemon website movie list accounts for 24 releases, but there's no sign of the coffee-drinking CGI Pikachu. For me, that's a bit of a deal-breaker, as that means this "complete set" is missing a big part of the Pokemon movie history puzzle.

The content details are also a little sparse. The Amazon listing states that the films use the Japanese language, and that's it. For a complete set, I'd hope that this release would include the option of the original Japanese voice actors and the English dub cast, particularly so I can relive Veronica Taylor's wonderfully nostalgic portrayal of Ash Ketchum at the start of the franchise. Her name is listed as a "Contributor," which gives me hope. However, there's no indication of whether that means that she contributed to the text in the hard-bound book that encloses the discs, or that it alludes to the English Dub tracks.

There's also no sign if any of the pre-film animated shorts are also part of this set. As a physical film collector, I have the Pokémon Movie Collection Limited Edition Steelbook on my shelf. It contains the first three movies but none of the shorts which proceeded them in the cinema. During a recent Pokemon movie marathon, I was heartbroken not to hear the catchy start of Vitamin C's "Vacation" during the Pikachu Vacation short, as it simply wasn't on the disc.

Hopefully Viz Media has truly made this a collection for Pokemon film fans by rectifying that glaring omission. Or at least, I'd hope that's the case for a set that wants $399.99 of your hard-earned Pokedollars. But we'll have to wait until November 14, later this year, to find out for sure.

In the meantime, check out my top tips for building the ultimate Blu-ray film collection if you're looking to expand your physical film collection ahead of the Pokemon: 24-Movie Collection drop.

• View all Pokemon Blu-rays at Amazon

We're also rounded up the Spider-Man: Brand New Day Blu-ray pre-orders if you're a physical media fan.