Category: Gaming

AFK Journey is a free-to-play fantasy RPG that released in March for PC and mobile, and it quickly became one of the top-rated games on iOS and Android. It gives you command of a party of heroes with a diverse array of classes and abilities, and with nearly 50 heroes currently available, your options are always growing and evolving.

Your party consists of five members, but AFK Journey has several systems that allow you to easily and conveniently build your team how you want. For example, let’s say you’ve built your party to level 20 but get a new character you want to try out. When you swap them into your party, they immediately jump to level 20. Basically, it’s as if the level belongs to the slot in your party rather than a specific character. So no more feeling like you wasted time and resources leveling up a character only to stop using them.

Then there’s class upgrades, which allow you to change the equipment of all characters in a given class simultaneously. There are six classes in AFK Journey: Warrior, Tank, Mage, Marksman, Rogue and Support. When you upgrade your Tank equipment, every Tank gets upgraded at the same time. That means you don’t have to micromanage every piece of equipment on all of your characters or equip and unequip as you move characters in and out of your party. It’s all accomplished in a couple taps or clicks on your screen.

AFK Journey is developed by Farlight Games and Lilith Games, studios responsible for several popular PC and mobile titles — including Call of Dragons, Rise of Kingdoms, Dislyte, and AFK Arena, the predecessor of AFK Journey. AFK Journey uses a beautiful canvas art style that makes for vibrant environments and a diverse cast of colorful characters.

A new content update, called Song of Strife, is out now and brings a load of additions with it. Here’s a rundown of the five biggest things the new update added:

1. A Brand-New Map Area

The world of AFK Journey is made up of multiple fully traversable maps, and the update added a new one: a vast desert area called the Ashen Wastes. As with the other areas of the game, a trail of golden light can guide you where you need to go to complete your current quests. But also like the other areas, players will be rewarded for exploring off the beaten path. There are all kinds of puzzles, treasures, and secrets waiting to be found. In order to access the Ashen Wastes, you’ll need to reach a Resonance Level of 240 and your server must have been active for at least 42 days from launch.

2. Focus on the Mauler Faction

The harsh Ashen Wastes are home to the Maulers, the most courageous of the six Factions in the AFK Journey world. Living in such an unforgiving environment has made them uniquely hardened, and “survival of the fittest” is deeply ingrained in their culture as a result. Since the environment has very little vegetation, they rely on hunting for survival. Hunters have to be strong and active, making it difficult for those who are weak, old, or sickly to contribute. And with limited resources, the Maulers prioritize the tribespeople who give them a fighting chance at survival. It all feeds into them valuing strength and bravery above all else.

3. Additions to the Main Story

In AFK Journey, you play the role of Magister Merlin, the most famous mage in the world. However, your past is shrouded in mystery. Something has happened to you — most of your powers are gone and your memories are fractured. You give yourself a new form (allowing you to customize your gender and appearance) and set out to gather allies, solve the mystery of what happened to you, and figure out how it’s connected to the growing spread of evil in the world. So far, the tale has mainly focused on the Lightbearer Empire, but with the addition of the new Ashen Wastes area, the story is about to expand. You enter this new area in search of someone pretending to be Merlin. What have they been up to? Why are they using your name to do it? No spoilers here — you’ll need to play the Song of Strife update to find out.

4. New Characters and Event

The update also added two new characters: Alsa and Soren. They’re both trying to become the champion of the Warsong Festival, the most important event in the Maulers’ history, and their story is woven together with the main quest that drew you to the area. And this certainly won’t be the last time AFK Journey gets updated with new characters and events. The developers are committed to supporting the game long-term, with seasonal content planned to release every four months or so and consistent updates to continually give players new things to do and see.

5. Magic Charms

The new Magic Charms system will also tie into seasonal updates and content. Charms enhance heroes’ power progression and are only effective during the current season. Each hero is able to equip three Charms, which provide stat bonuses and come in five qualities: Rare, Elite, Epic, Legendary, and Mythic. Charms with higher quality provide bigger stat bonuses, with Mythic Charms providing multiple exclusive bonuses. If a hero is equipped with a collection of charms of equal or higher quality, that activates their Seasonal Prowess. The higher the quality of the Charms, the stronger the hero’s Seasonal Prowess.

AFK Journey is available for download now on PC, iOS, and Android. It has cross-save, so you can play at home, then take that same playthrough on the go. It’s free-to-play and offers hundreds of hours of content, whether or not you choose to purchase anything from the Trolley, the shop where you can get cosmetics, in-game currency, or special offers that consistently update over time. Give it a go and enjoy the Song of Strife update, which is out now.

This review covers the multiplayer modes of Homeworld 3. For thoughts on the multiplayer skirmish and War Games co-op mode, see the Homeworld 3 Single-Player Campaign review.

When coming up with a real-time strategy game’s multiplayer modes, a developer generally has two options: let us play with all of the toys in an all-out brawl until the other side is dead, with maybe a few minor twists thrown in, or try something new, different, and a little risky. In Homeworld 3, Blackbird Interactive has had it both ways, delivering both the bog-standard multiplayer skirmish match between Motherships and an inventive new co-op mode that, if the content continues to flow, has the potential to take on a life of its own.

There are few surprises to be found in skirmish if you’ve ever played a Homeworld game before – or even if you haven’t. It’s limited to team matches or free-for-alls with up to six players or AI bots, and it doesn’t really rock the boat with its straightforward “beat the other team” objective (you can set it to kill the mothership, kill all motherships and carriers, or kill every ship). There aren’t a ton of maps right now – just six, and only one that supports six players, though that’s a void that community-made maps should fill in short order. The only other real option is to turn off harvesting in favor of resource injections every minute (or you can have both) if you don’t want to bother with pesky logistics, but it’s precisely the sort of sandbox we need to make creative use of all of the ships Homeworld 3 offers. Heck, people would be up in arms if it weren’t here, and rightfully so.

Naturally you can’t pause the action like you can in the campaign, which can be frustrating as you’re getting the hang of ordering ships around these expansive areas of 3D space. But that’s balanced out by the fact that your opponents are struggling with the same thing, so it’s not as though you’re at an inherent disadvantage – unless you’re playing against the AI, which has its own weaknesses to compensate for. Learning to spin all of these plates at once while keeping your eyes on what’s important is part of the challenge (I tend to spend a lot of time in the zoomed-out sensor view here) and I felt myself getting better at it with every match.

Much like previous Homeworld games, the two playable factions – the Hiigarans and the Incarnate – aren’t wildly different in how they play. The Incarnate, for instance, have no bombers but instead have more durable assault corvettes that fill basically the same role and have the same cloaking ability, and their multi-beam frigates are roughly equivalent to the Hiigarans’ ion canon frigates. Both sides have missile frigates as well, and their carriers, destroyers, battlecruisers, and turrets have stat differences that don’t really make you think outside the box when switching from one to the other.

Certainly, faction-specific tactics for each will emerge to capitalize on those subtle advantages – as well as things like the Hiigarans having superior scouting abilities thanks to their recon ships – but the thing that seems most significant in my experience has been how repair and capturing abilities are shuffled between ships. The Hiigarans have a dedicated support frigate that does nothing but repair damaged ships, but if you want to be sneaky and attempt to capture an enemy vessel you’ll have to pull one of your resource controllers off of mining duty and use it to attempt the abduction. The Incarnate remix this by putting the repair functionality on their resource controllers and using smaller, more fragile capture corvettes to do their pilfering – and they require two to survive long enough to latch on instead of one.

Having to choose between income and repair power is a big deal for an Incarnate player. In practice, though, having support frigates in the fray against a human opponent doesn’t shift the balance too much in the Hiigarans’ favor because anyone with a brain is going to target those first, and the Incarnate’s minor firepower advantage makes up for the rest.

There’s one other difference between the Hiigarans and Incarnate that baffles me, though: the Hiigaran ships default to neutral stance, while the Incarnate default to aggressive. That sounds thematically appropriate, certainly, but it means that the Incarnate have a real advantage when it comes to building ships – especially strike craft – while under attack. Aggressive ships will immediately scramble and go after enemy ships that come into range, but neutral ships will fire back without moving other than to turn to face their attackers. When we’re dealing with small, fragile fighters, that means they’re sitting ducks and will get picked off almost immediately (probably before you notice you’re under attack), so if you don’t manually select them and change their stance or give them attack orders the moment they’re built, they’re as good as dead. That’s not a bug like some other issues, such as a voice chiming in to announce the loss of a resource ship that was actually the enemy’s or calling a corvette a frigate, but it might as well be.

It’s impossible to know what will happen when Homeworld 3 is out in the wild and the most competitive players get hold of it, but in the matches I’ve played, the big trend has been that the Motherships are very active participants in the early fighting instead of hanging back, as they usually do in traditional Homeworld matches. Part of that is that these maps, which are largely based on those from the campaign, aren’t nearly as vast as Homeworld vets are used to, and also Homeworld 3’s Motherships are relatively quick to move and can get around easily. They’re also decently armed against fighters and corvettes, and you’ll need all the help you can get to keep the pressure off of your resource harvesters and defend them from rush attacks aimed at crippling your economy before you can tech up and unlock heavier ships. However, knowing when to pull back is crucial if you don’t want to be caught by destroyers and battlecruisers, because they’ll burn through your Mothership’s armor very quickly.

Terrain also plays a significant role because it’s often close to resource patches, and that means you can cover it with heavy turrets (and anti-strike craft turrets to defend those) that’ll make short work of an enemy resource collector that autonomously wanders near. It’s also viable to turtle up by parking your Mothership near a floating platform, making it difficult for an enemy to get near without being bombarded by turrets and tripping over mines. Other than that, I haven’t found using terrain as cover terribly useful because it’s difficult to manage sight lines in real time for anything smaller and faster than a destroyer – but again, that doesn’t mean the community won’t find ways to do it.

Homeworld 3’s most exciting multiplayer mode, though, is War Games – I haven’t seen too many co-op modes in this vein since the Last Stand mode from Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 – Retribution, and it’s given me thrills that remind me of those memorable battles. Alone or with up to two allies, you take control of a scaled-down fleet headed by a single carrier and build options decided by your chosen loadout; you’ll start with one focused on Hiigaran strike craft, but as you level up you’ll gain access to others that cater to bombers, missile frigates, Incarnate ships, and more. While it’s a bummer to not have access to heavy-hitting destroyers and battlecruisers, there’s a lot going on to make up for their absence, and you’ll generally want to be as mobile as possible.

Rather than simply holding out against waves of enemies, you’re given randomized objectives to complete on a series of three maps: destroy a carrier, capture some points on the map, salvage some objects, escort AI-controlled ships, that sort of thing. You’re never entirely sure what you’ll get, so you’ll have to be at least somewhat flexible with how you gear yourself to handle what’s coming. Meanwhile, the incoming fleets keep getting stronger, so once you’ve completed your objective you have to make the decision of whether to hold out and scour the map clean of resources, or hyperspace jump to the next one to avoid taking more losses than those resources can replace.

Homeworld 3 War Games Multiplayer Mode Screenshots

There aren’t that many objectives, though – if you play through a handful of times you’ll see them all – so what really keeps each match feeling different from the last is the randomized artifacts that you’ll collect as you go. I quickly realized that scouting for and gathering them was one of the most important things to worry about when I arrived on each map.

Each one gives you a choice of three randomized upgrades for your fleet, such as buffing your fighters’ damage and armor at the cost of speed, unlocking more powerful tactical bombers or barrage missile frigates that launch twice as many warheads per volley, increasing your frigate unit cap at the expense of your strike craft cap, or enhancing up your carrier to crank out ships faster but also reduce its armor. There are a lot of possibilities that all stack together, and I often found myself pivoting away from what I thought would be my strengths toward a series of enticing upgrades that supercharged my assault frigates. I also found it easy to make the mistake of going too far and turning my fighters into glass cannons that melted under fire faster than they could take out a target, but that’s the kind of error most people probably won’t make twice as they learn to craft builds in any roguelike.

This format works well enough playing alone (though the third and final stage can be a beast to solo) but when you’re working with a team to specialize in different directions you can coordinate so that, for instance, one of you focuses on taking out enemy strike craft while the other burns down incoming destroyers as quickly as possible. That can come together in ways more than powerful enough to overcome the Incarnate destroyers, battlecruisers, and even Motherships that’re thrown at you, but don’t worry: there are plenty of options to upgrade the challenge, so I wouldn’t expect War Games to become a pushover anytime soon.

Blackbird clearly doesn’t either, because its roadmap for updates is focused around more content for War Games. Based on what I’ve played thus far, it’s a safe bet that it’ll have legs – so long as we keep getting more new rewards to unlock than the six fleet types that’ll all be available once you hit level 20 (I made it to level 11 as of this writing after about as many hours of play).

Another thing that will certainly expand on the longevity of Homeworld 3 is mods, and there’s a handy section of the menu where you’ll be able to select them. Eventually, that is – the actual implementation of that and the release of the official mod tools has been pushed back from launch. Even so, I’m encouraged by the fact that Blackbird is giving modding the prioritization that it deserves. Homeworld has a long, proud history of mods that includes some of the finest Star Wars and Star Trek (among others) total conversions ever created, and I look forward to that tradition carrying forward.

This review covers the single-player campaign of Homeworld 3. For thoughts on the multiplayer skirmish and War Games co-op mode, see the Homeworld 3 Multiplayer review.

Considering Homeworld 2 came out more than 20 years ago (and was remastered in 2015) it’s a welcome surprise how little had to change – and how little complexity had to be sacrificed – to bring this classic, large-scale space strategy gameplay up to modern standards and deliver a visually spectacular and mechanically varied campaign. Building and controlling an armada of strike craft, frigates, and capital ships in full 3D space is certainly a little tricker to wrap your head around than most RTS games, but thanks to the ability to pause and give orders at any time you can grow into command at your own pace. The payoff is more than worth it, and this campaign invites you to embrace your inner Admiral Akbar and walk into traps just to blast your way out.

Using a now well-worn template for soft-rebooting a series, this story follows a brand-new character who must seek out the original protagonist after they go missing – in this instance, 20 years prior. Despite that cliche, Imogen S’jet’s search for answers about what happened to Karan S’jet’s lost fleet is delivered with convincing emotion. That includes some very reasonable conflict between her and her second in command as he tries to keep her on the task of tracking down the looming new threat to Hiigara and the galaxy at large they were sent out after in the first place.

Thanks in large part to its fully animated cinematics (as opposed to the Homeworld series’ traditional hand-painted animatics), Imogen feels more human and relatable than Karan ever did, despite being hooked into the same fleet-controlling machines, wearing the same skin-tight wetsuit, and floating in another goo-filled tank with her eyes closed. But she gets to stretch her legs and emote more during the visions she has while the Mothership hyperspace jumps between missions, and that’s where we get to know her a little better. In sharp contrast to the massive scale of the city-sized Mothership flying through the wreckage of even more gargantuan megastructures, these cutscenes feel small and intimate; we only ever really see four characters, so it’s almost like watching a stage play.

One of those characters is the antagonist, The Queen, who comes across as a bit over-the-top maniacal but chews the scenery with gusto and conveys a menacing, wild-eyed sort of madness. There’s clearly something not right with her – and that allows her to be tragic and sympathetic in certain moments. That said, I did roll my eyes a bit when she recites Darth Vader’s “Join me and rule by my side” speech almost verbatim (she is not, as it turns out, Imogen’s father). And while her use of hyperspace as a weapon sounds cool, it mostly happens off screen and we aren’t given a real sense of how it’s causing all this destruction. The one time we see it in action on a small scale raises a bunch of intriguing possibilities for how it could be used in battle… but then, anticlimactically, it’s never seen again. So while the characters work on an emotional level, the overarching story does end up feeling a bit lost amid its tangle of lore about space ancients.

When the view zooms out to the battlefield, Homeworld 3 immediately recaptures the feeling of controlling a fleet of starships, and being able to select a group of ships and put them into one of several formations – from a delta V to a sphere to a claw – and toggle between three different behavior stances is as powerful as ever. Taking in the details as capital ships bombard each other with ballistic weapons and laser beams, their turrets swiveling to track the fighter craft weaving between them leaving streaks of color behind, as explosions constantly go off will never, ever get old. I’m often willing to take more losses than I need to in battle just so I can zoom in, turn off the interface (a one-button convenience), and enjoy the show.

Sure, you’ll get better results by meticulously organizing your ships into control groups, optimizing formations, and prioritizing targets to take out threats to your best ships first (and you’ll need to on higher difficulties). But once you’re confident you have the upper hand, there’s nothing wrong with hitting F4 to select every combat-capable ship in your fleet and ordering them to pick their own targets according to what they’re best at, and blast everything in sight.

Those targets are almost entirely ships of the Queen’s Incarnate fleet, and there are a couple of moments where in-engine cutscenes call back to the original Homeworld by making their fighters feel like an aggressive pack of animals. There are differences between how the enemy fleet operates versus the Hiigarans, but those are mostly relevant in multiplayer; in the campaign, they’re effectively very similar to your own ships (outside of how you have to keep an eye out for pesky capture corvettes that can nab your frigates while you aren’t watching and turn them against you). After fighting the Taiidan Empire and the Vaygr in previous games, I admit I’d hoped for a more dramatic departure from the standard enemy fleet template this time, but the Incarnate certainly put up a decent fight.

Homeworld 3’s 13 campaign missions, which took me around 10 hours to complete on the default difficulty, are easily the most diverse of the Homeworld series, both visually and in their objectives. That’s mostly because of the new direction in map design. Previous Homeworld games have spiced up deep space with colorful nebulas as backdrops, but are largely set in huge empty voids with just a few asteroids floating around in them. Homeworld 3, by contrast, has so many massive objects to navigate through that space can feel downright claustrophobic and cluttered with ancient alien ruins, and often telegraphs choke points where the enemy will warp in. They’re still huge maps relative to most real-time strategy games, of course, but scaling back on the scope means there’s a lot less of building up a fleet and sending it on a long journey toward a target, and that’s a good change that keeps downtime to a minimum.

Several of the mission maps are set within enormous metallic superstructures built by The Progenitor ancients who created the hyperspace cores, which are impressively massive but tend to be a bit industrial and flat. Others, however, take us to very different and visually striking regions of space. After the opening sequence has the Mothership lifting off and doing its shakedown cruise within the atmosphere of Hiigara itself (a first for this series unless you count the ground-based action of Deserts of Kharak), we get missions in a fast-moving asteroid field where you simply have to make it to the other side without your ships getting smashed, another where you must navigate through a crevasse in an enormous ice sheet undetected, lead a small strike group to take out explosive targets without support, and more. (It’s a little silly that the ability to rotate the new horizontal Mothership on its axis exists, but as a fan of the distinctive Space Banana design of old I’m pleased that we’re given the option – even if it’s just to fit through one tight, vertical space.)

Maps frequently made me stop to appreciate their awe-inspiring scope, especially when we’re reminded every so often that these ships we’re throwing around are actually huge and full of people. That’s something that’s easy to forget when you’re zoomed out and watching green and red dots disappear from the tactical map or seeing the distant flash of a capital ship flaming out.

Managing all of that is no small feat, of course, and the controls for Homeworld have always been a bit tricky, given that there’s a whole extra axis of movement to account for than in most real-time strategy games. Homeworld 3 allows you to revert to the camera control scheme from Homeworld Remastered Collection, where your view is bound to a ship or other object and you can rotate around it, but by default you’re given full control of the camera using WASD controls to fly through space, with the option of anchoring to a ship. I think I mostly prefer the old controls, simply because it’s quite easy to accidentally drift off away from the action, but I’m glad the option exists – and in fact, the degree to which the controls and UI are customizable is pretty impressive, with all manner of toggles for how you want them to behave.

But no matter what you choose, getting your ships to move to a precise location can involve swinging the camera around so you can view it from different angles, and that can be frustrating to pull off in a hurry. However, in the single-player campaign at least, the pressure to get it right quickly is completely relieved by the fact that you can pause (or slow time) with the push of a button and fiddle with things until you’ve positioned your orders exactly the way you want them.

That said, whether or not your orders will be obeyed to the letter is another question. Ship behavior is a little iffy, and sometimes I’ve had groups get caught on obstacles, fail to acknowledge they have a line of sight on a target, refuse to grab an object marked as salvageable on the map, or simply not move at all despite repeated requests and asking nicely. That was especially true of getting the big, slow battlecruisers to move in formation, but since they’re only unlocked for the final mission that wasn’t exactly a constant issue. It’s also frustrating when ion frigates and bombers literally can’t hit the broad side of a battlecruiser because they seem to be targeting the very tail end rather than its center mass, and from certain angles they consistently miss their shots.

Being able to pause also mostly alleviates one of my main gripes with how Homeworld 3’s Hiigaran fighters and corvettes behave on their default neutral stance when approached by an enemy ship, which is to shoot back but not scramble. This leaves them sitting ducks, and if you didn’t notice they were in danger ahead of time, you’ll probably be too late to save them – and building new strike craft while your Mothership or carrier are under fire requires you to select each one as it emerges and change its stance or giving it orders immediately.

Much of this terrain has tunnels you can pass ships through in order to bypass defenses and hit a target, but I wasn’t wild about these. For starters, they seem like the only way to succeed in the missions where they’re available, so using them doesn’t feel like a clever maneuver so much as the one thing I could’ve done – like a tutorial, but still happening late in the campaign. After the first novel time it doesn’t seem all that interesting, and it kind of makes the bad guys look silly for not laying mines at the exit. Also, it can be a hassle to get a formation of fighters, bombers, and corvettes to fly through them smoothly – pausing makes it manageable, but they still often get caught on the edges.

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Another Homeworld 3 idea born of all of these objects floating in space is that it gives you surfaces to stick deployable turrets to. They’re a bit finicky to place – it’s not always clear why you can put them in one spot but not another – but you can redeploy them as needed, so there’s lots of flexibility. There’s one mission built around them that shows how effective they can be if you manage to turn an area into a chokepoint.

It has to be said that, relative to Homeworld 2, Homeworld 3 feels simpler. I miss the flexibility, options, and rewards that came from mechanics like subsystem targeting brought. Without that, the only real nuance to battering down an enemy’s battlecruiser’s HP bar – beyond choosing suitable anti-capital ship weapons for your attack – is positioning your ships to hit it from the rear for a damage bonus. But that’s hard to do considering how much ships move and rotate around in combat, so the only way to manage it consistently is to fully surround your target. Also, without veterancy (where ships that’ve seen enough combat get stat bonuses) to think about, ships feel entirely disposable; you do get to carry your surviving fleet from one mission to the next, but since they’re no stronger all that saves you is a little bit of time spent harvesting resources to get up and running at the beginning, and you can choose to start with a default fleet instead if you want. On the other hand, this game marks a return to building individual fighters instead of entire squadrons at once as we do in Homeworld 2, and that adds a welcome bit of extra control to how groups are composed.

While I appreciated the variety of settings and objectives throughout the campaign, I was left wishing it’d taken more cues from StarCraft 2 in its design when it comes to replayability. There are no optional objectives to try for on a subsequent run, and because each ship has just one upgrade to unlock (which makes them feel obligatory rather than optional) instead of a choice between two or more mutually exclusive options, there’s no real reason to come back for another go other than the simple challenge of cranking up the difficulty another notch. It’s kind of a bummer not to have that variety available in the campaign, particularly when I look at the ship variants introduced in the War Games multiplayer mode.

That’s especially true because Homeworld 3 has the fewest types of Hiigaran ships to play with of the series, mostly due to the fact that there’s only one type of corvette. It’s certainly enough to get the job done, but feels a little thin when composing a fleet. Instead, frigates are the backbone of any group, and that’s where the vast majority of the Hiigarans’ variety and flexibility lies. You get to choose from straightforward assault frigates, long-range missile frigates, ion beam frigates, minelayer frigates, support (repair) frigates, and barrage (anti-fighter) frigates, and finding a balance between those is generally where the interesting decisions behind building a strike group arise.

Although EA is set to reveal College Football 25 in full sometime this month, the PlayStation Store has leaked the game’s cover early.

Spotted by The Athletic, Sony’s digital gaming storefront accidentally shared the cover for EA’s highly anticipated sports game. While the Deluxe Edition listing has been removed, the listing for College Football 25 has been updated to include a banner of the same image depicted on the game’s Deluxe Edition.

As you can see below, the cover is for College Football 25’s Deluxe Edition. The image depicts several college football players set to return for another season, with Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, Michigan running back Donovan Edwards, and Colorado wide receiver Travis Hunter front and center.

While the cover might feel a bit crowded to some, it highlights why a new college football game is even possible, as this will be the first time college football players will be able to license their name, image, and likeness in the game.

After the cover was leaked, the official College Football X/Twitter account acknowledged the leaks, confirming that “see both covers” for College Football 25 will be properly revealed next Thursday.

In 2021, EA originally announced its plans to make a new college football game, but it would be using generic players to avoid legal issues. However, the publisher reversed course after the United States Supreme Court ruled that student-athletes could use NIL to make a profit in their collegiate career. It was previously reported that players who were interested in being in College Football 25 had to opt in, with some of the compensation for opting in including $600 and a copy of the game.

EA officially announced earlier this year it would make a proper reveal for College Football 25 in May. Though College Football 25 has yet to receive a proper reveal beyond the two teasers, EA previously shared details of the upcoming sports game with ESPN. This includes confirmation that Dynasty Mode and Road to Glory will return. There will also be confirmation that 134 FBS schools have agreed to participate, though real-life coaches, such as Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin, will not be featured, at least not released.

College Football 25 will also incorporate new features introduced to college football, such as the College Football Playoff system, NIL, and the transfer portal. However, EA has yet to share details on implementing those.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a statement from EA Sports.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Long-time PUBG players, you’re getting a gift this month. The original Erangel map is returning, and changes to the gunplay, map layout, and visuals are designed to give you a nostalgic blast from the past while still delivering the evolved gameplay you’ve come to expect.

For those who don’t know, PUBG first launched in Steam’s Early Access in March 2017. It became one of the most popular games of all time, shattering Steam’s record with 3.2 million concurrent players. Erangel was the game’s first battleground and is still part of the rotation, but it’s seen countless updates and changes over the years as PUBG has grown. This new update will take Erangel back to its roots.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the UI has been reverted to the Early Access version of the game. That includes the match start timer, kill/survival UI, original world map and minimap, and old-school font and graphics. As soon as you drop into your first match, you’ll feel like you stepped into a time capsule.

The layout of the map also has been changed back to its original form. Remember when you started each match by rushing to grab your favorite weapon? Well that’s back, with bench weapons reinstated on the starting island. You can also find the Tommy Gun in the Care Package, just like the good old days.

Once you get your hands on that favorite weapon, you might notice it fires a little differently too. While not an exact copy of the old-school design, many guns have reduced recoil to emulate the OG experience (these changes won’t apply to sniper rifles, handguns, or crossbows). You also might notice that it’ll take more time to knock down enemies, like it used to.

In the leadup to the throwback event, publisher Krafton has collaborated with popular PUBG streamers and influencers to celebrate. Shroud is a popular Twitch streamer with more than 10 million followers, and he established himself as one of the best PUBG players in the world early in the game’s lifespan. He became well-known enough in the community that he got to design his own in-game weapon skins.

WackyJacky101 is a PUBG player and content creator who specializes in guides, tutorials, testing, and analysis to help gamers get the most out of their PC games. He created a massive spreadsheet called PUBG Tools with detailed information — including base damage, time between shots, average bullet velocity, and bullet travel time — for every weapon in the game, and he updates it whenever a new weapon is added or changes are made to weapon balancing. It’s become an invaluable resource for players.

Shroud and WackyJacky101 teamed up for a time-traveling video to build excitement for the release of Erangel Classic, and Shroud will put together a team for a Squad Battle event on May 18. The Erangel Classic update will be live for two weeks for all players — May 14–28 on PC and May 23–June 6 on console. The classic map will replace the current Erangel map in Normal Match during those two weeks.

Sometimes, you want to just escape from reality and lose yourself in a new, fantastical world. And sometimes, you want to do so for hours on end. When you want to set up a long-term board game night or ongoing campaign with a group of likeminded and passionate board gamers, we’ve got you covered with our list of some of the best legacy board games around. Some of these games are also light on difficulty, creating a low barrier to entry for newer players.

TL;DR Campaign Board Games

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (Blue Version)

11

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (Red Version)

8

Predating the actual pandemic, Pandemic Legacy is a campaign-oriented version of Pandemic, which launched the still-cresting wave of cooperative board games. You’ll work together to research and hopefully eliminate global diseases that are threatening humanity. Unlike the simple win-or-lose binary of the original, this game spans a series of months with your level of success in each game carrying onto the next, supported by a narrative framework and lots of mechanical surprises along the way. Will you be able to deal with the curveballs and save the world from the threat of infectious disease, or will you watch millions suffer before succumbing to the same sicknesses you failed to treat? Our fate is in your hands. If you want the full story of how this fictional pandemic unfolded you can start during the Cold War with the excellent Season 0, or go into the future with the less successful Season 2.

Frosthaven / Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Frosthaven

19

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

10

The original Gloomhaven may be out of print, but its stand-alone sequel Frosthaven is in stock and ready for adventure. This is a fantasy-themed cooperative game where players take on the roles of adventurers and skirmish their way through various tactical combat scenarios. Consisting of tons of these scenarios, Frosthaven is a long-term campaign best enjoyed if you’re sticking with the same group throughout. Setting up and learning the game takes a while, but it’s worth it for dedicated gamers, and it’s great for repeat playthroughs. For a more less daunting and more streamlined take on the same game world, be sure to check out the more Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion as well. Your gaming group can even use the same characters in both games.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Star Wars: Imperial Assault

7

Thrust yourself into the Galactic Civil War, where you can play as either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire. Choose between two game modes: campaign and skirmish. In campaign mode, you fight against the Empire in a series of continuous scenarios and experience the detailed narrative taking place after the destruction of the Death Star. The gameplay consists of tactical combat where players will utilize over 250 playable cards to outfit their heroes, modify weapons, and develop your character’s skills.

Roll Player Adventures

Roll Player Adventures

3

Roll Player Adventures is a tightly-designed choose your own adventure-style fantasy cooperative roleplaying game. Not exceptionally challenging, Roll Player Adventures is a good pick for entry-level campaigners with hundreds of different cards, tokens, and dice to help supplement your session. You can also create your own character or import a preexisting one. Gameplay is done through dice manipulation with your fast-growing deck of cards, essentially modifying rolls to complete combat encounters or other challenges.

One Deck Dungeon

One Deck Dungeon

0

What do you get when you mix Roguelike video game mechanics with a quick and easy fantasy card game? You get something like One Deck Dungeon. With the game’s Campaign Mode, players can take control of one of five heroes and choose from four difficulty levels to adventure through the dungeon, defeating bosses and learning talents while filling out their character’s campaign sheets. Like other legacy-type games, talents earned will be carried over into future playthroughs, incentivizing you to play on higher difficulties and experience more of what the campaign has to offer!

Mortum: Medieval Detective

Mortum Medieval Detective

2

More narrative-focused and mechanics-lite, Mortum: Medieval Detective is a cooperative game of mystery and deduction. Consisting of three decks that make up just as many scenarios, the goal of the game is to work your way through the story and solve the surrounding mysteries through classic detective work and keeping track of time via the game pieces. Settle in, as one scenario takes upwards of two hours, and each story leads into the next, creating a fully immersive campaign.

Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated

Dire Wolf

Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated

0

The original Clank! and its successor, Clank! Catacombs, which made our cut of the best deck-building games, were single-shot affairs where you constructed a deck of cards in-game to guide an adventurer into and out of a dangerous dungeon, hopefully carrying armfuls of loot. From that concept, it’s only a very short step to keeping that deck from game to game, continually updating and refining your strategy as the campaign pushes new challenges at you to handle. Add in some branding from a famous D&D live play channel, and you’ve got the excellent Clank! Legacy, where you and your fellow adventurers will have to survive a harrowing series of dungeon delves, with the original game’s focus on stealth, as you try to avoid waking sleeping horrors in the deep, very much intact. If you can manage it, then you’ll watch your heroes rise from desperate rogues to iconic heroes.

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

0

Tolkein, with his love of traditional things, might not have approved, but campaign board games are increasingly turning to app support in order to track the game state and provide players with fresh takes on the concept. Such is the case with Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth, set in the days just prior to the events depicted in the famous novels with the players cast as heroes investigating the initial stirrings of Sauron’s shadow. On top of a fun, robust exploration and combat system that develops alongside your adventures, allowing you to build your characters to face new challenges, the game also uses its electronic support to pose new problems and riddles, worthy of Bilbo himself, that no game based purely on plastic and cardboard could manage.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of The West

1

Campaign games bring to mind an image of long, intense play sessions that pile rules upon rules in order to keep players on their toes. But this latest entry in the all-conquering Ticket to Ride series proves that families can have just as much fun over a series of linked games. It keeps the original’s Rummy-based play, in which players collect sets of coloured cards and cash them in to take ownership of routes on the board, with all the excitement and one-upmanship that entails. However, as you play you’ll also uncover a fictional secret history of dangerous criminals and heroic frontiersmen, pushing your railroads ever westward into uncharted territory. And with each new revelation there’s also a delightful new mechanical spoke to add to your game, each fizzing with playful ideas to keep your experience fresh without overloading you with rules.

Looking for board games on a budget? Check out our list of the best cheap board games. If you’re more in the mood for something spooky, check out our picks for the best horror board games. And if you don’t have a whole lot of spare time, take a glance at our favorite quick-playing board games.

The first major patch for hit city builder Manor Lords, version 0.7.960, has been revealed by developer Slavic Magic and released for public testing.

While this means the patch isn’t officially out yet, those looking to enjoy its wealth of bug fixes and other improvements can now do so at the risk of some elements, like balance changes, being a tad off. Players happy to wait can do so knowing the full patch shouldn’t be too far away.

Revealed in a Steam post, Slavic Magic made these potential imperfections clear and recommended players back up their save files before switching to the test version. “The new strings are not localized yet and stability hasn’t yet been thoroughly tested,” it added. “Some balancing changes are still experimental.”

Players looking to test the update can do so by right-clicking Manor Lords in their Steam libraries, selecting properties, then moving to the betas tab, entering the password veryNiceBasket, and choosing “pre_release” from the Beta Participation drop down list.

Slavic Magic said they began by addressing “all the most common reported issues” such as clogged Trading Posts, weak archers, overly high ale consumption, disappearing crops, and more. A new major feature called King’s Tax has also been added, which ultimately rewards good workers and punishes poor ones. The full patch notes are available below.

Manor Lords arrived in Early Access form on April 26, 2024 and proved an immediate Steam hit, selling more than one million copies in a day and hitting the highest ever concurrent player count for a city builder.

Manor Lords Version 0.7.960 Patch Notes

Major Changes:
-The King’s Tax is now enabled (or Annual Royal Tax, can’t decide on the name)
a) This tax is collected annually from all players (main player and AI) and goes to your liege. It’s counted per population and therefore should become a counterbalance for players who hoard huge wealth despite having non-optimized economies.
b) [WIP] For now the player can go in debt without consequence, but in the future the player will lose king’s favor and eventually the king’s army will show up as enemies for players who refuse to pay

-Global/Local trade switch for trading posts
a) The player can now switch trade to “local only” in the trading post for each type of good if they want to use the trading post to exchange goods between their own regions but ignore the free merchants.
b) For now 2 trading posts (both regions) are still required to make it work.
c) Employed traders will prioritize to travel to the place with best prices to commence trade, and yes potentially including regions owned by other Lords. This can have interesting consequences in the future. For now I reduced the transport distance from the calculation in order to make it more predictable for the player where the traders will go (to the place with the best price).
d) Regional wealth is still required for exchanging goods between regions with a trading post since I want to keep the regions as independent economic units which in my view a more realistic simulation of economy.
Gameplay and Balance:
-[Experimental] When consuming food, people will now pick a random food resource instead of eating food in a specific order
-[Experimental] Fertility is no longer drained after crop growth reaches 100% so that always micromanaging early harvest is no longer a preferred strategy. Yield may still increase over 100% growth if max yield is not reached.
-[Experimental] When harvesting, the crops are directly added to the field inventory instead of the villager inventory. This was done to ensure that harvesting walk times aren’t the main bottleneck for farming, especially for large fields. [Side note: moving harvest season to August is also possible in a future patch if needed]
-[Experimental] Prioritized Oxen plowing over transporting resources back to the granary & warehouse to reduce the ox walking back and forth from the plowed field every time a new batch of resources is available for transport
-Plowing shed now adds 2 livestock worker slots
-Lowered the rate of the Baron claiming regions and adjusted it to better reflect the game settings
-Removed the worker camp upgrade – it was meant for colony regions and will be readded when they are properly implemented
-Food producing residential plots no longer stock up on their produce before they share with the marketplace
-Increased sawpit log storage space to 5
-[Experimental] When establishing a trade route, the merchants will no longer all spawn in the nearest tradepoint. Instead, the game will distribute the merchants to circle between various tradepoints in order to make building trading posts right on the edge of the region less optimal.
-Increased warbows ranged attack from 4 to 12
-[Experimental] “Trade logistics” development branch now lowers the cost of new trade routes by 50% instead of clamping it at 25
-[Experimental] Cost of opening new trade routes now scales exponentially with every opened trade route
-[Experimental] Base cost of opening a trade route was increased from 12 to 20 (that is before the good value multiplier)
-[Experimental] When market is oversupplied, the player can still export stuff, although for much lower price
-[Experimental] The price multiplier for oversupplied goods is now 0.75x for oversupplied and 0.5x for critically oversupplied
-[Experimental] How fast market is oversupplied no longer depends on the value of goods because it punished having high value trade routes. Now the oversupply rates are equal for all good types.
-[Experimental] Better deals development branch reduces the foreign import tariff by 50% instead of removing it completely
-[Experimental] Reduced ale consumption by 75% (around 1/3 per family per month)
-[Experimental] Made the building placement steepness limits harsher cause the trading posts and churches often looked super janky on very sharp slopes
-Soldiers no longer trigger “unburied bodies” approval factor when corpses are in their proximity
-[Experimental] Hitching post is free again, to reduce chances of players getting stuck with no ox, no hitching post and no ability to order an ox
Minor Changes:
-Applied the “mindfulness” system that was initially designed for the oxen to the free merchants. This system is used to reduce clumps and traffic jams.
-Moved the location of trades further off map to make sure there is some space for all the trade wagons even if the players place the trading post right on the edge of the map
-If a trading post is clogged, traders are allowed to make transactions without entering the shed, as long as they are within the general building bounds
-[Experimental] Changed default AA under DX11 to TAA
-Added a spatialization update call when recruits are sneakily teleported home when rallied to ensure collisions are properly calculated after teleportation
-Added a check for idle villagers to avoid hanging around the graveyard for random conversation since it looked weird
-Made “is close to camera” value update on setting follow mode to make sure the game doesn’t optimize animations or sound effects thinking the character is still far from the camera
-Disabled fire damage for people who have water buckets and are actively firefighting + reduced the fire damage amount
-When all resource visualization slots are “filled”, villagers will transport to a random one instead of the first one found. This ensures less traffic jams for instance at the churchyard if all graves are “full” already.
-Firefighting villagers will now ignore anti-clogging behavior (waiting their turn at narrow pathfinding points)
-Added a “mourning period left” UI element in the residential panel to display how many days of mourning are left until the burgage plot can bring in more family members again
-Added mourning icon to the building floater
-Made sure mourning period is properly added to save data
-After continuing the game after a victory the camera should go back to the player’s main region instead of levitating over the map edge
-[Experimental] Disabled the ability to quicksave during the game over / victory cinematic
-Disabled the ability to manual save the game after being defeated & added a tooltip explaining why saves are disabled
-Disabled quick save and autosave if game was lost
-When ox gathers a log, it will prioritize immediately bringing it to the sawpit before bringing it to the logging camp unless construction reserve forbids it
-Improved marketplace logistics efficiency and optimization
-Tuned the AI retreat distances in an attempt to reduce how often its archers get into the loop of attack-retreat
-Added the missing trading post building thumbnail
-Minor unit in-town pathfinding updates
-Swapped the old UE4 destructible system for a new, UE5 friendly, chaos based debris system. For now it’s just used for chopped firewood cutter logs.
-Further tweaks to properly choose the right default AA/upscaler during the first time launch correctly for specific GPUs (eg. RTX properly defaulting to DLSS)
-Added kings tax rate multiplier to the game setup settings
-Due to mismatch in global market supply stock values, old saves (from builds 0.7.954-0.7.956) will have their market supply reset on loading
-[Experimental] Due to changes in how food is consumed, a popup “Food consumed” may no longer appear if a building is selected while a food is being consumed from inventory
-[Experimental] Made the sheep flock a bit more closely together to look more like a herd
-Steepness limits no longer apply when placing rally points
-Players can now rally their militia on fields and pastures
-Trading posts will now display a price range for imports in case they can buy it both from other regions AND from foreign trade sources
-Increased the sheep & lamb collision radius
-Capped the number of workers who supply a single market stall at the same time to 2 to reduce markets getting completely clogged with the new upped market supply frequency
-Further optimized the market supply functions to make late game towns run smoother
-Optimized the function that searches for a friend to do idle tasks with (like conversations)
-Optimized the door opening animations
-Increased the precision when checking whether a character is inside a building on fire and should take damage
-Unified the currency icon in the mercenary company panel to make it clearer that you’re paying with treasury and not regional wealth
-Added accommodation call after fire is started and turns people homeless so that they can be reaccommodated to other available burgage plots immediately
-Since almost all families have more than 1 family member, I made the “workplace/reassign” buttons aligned vertically instead of horizontally in the family list
-Fixed old fonts being used in the family entry widgets
Crash Fixes:
-Fixed a crash when doing a sequence of livestock import, export and import, because “home” wasn’t cleared properly during export and the same animal was reimported
-Fixed a rare crash if a handcart fails to spawn, probably if the trading post was build so that part of it crosses the map edge
-Fix crash on startup if OpenXr sdk is installed
Bug Fixes:
-Fixed victory status not resetting after starting a new game, leading to a game over screen not appearing if the player lost/won multiple games without turning the game off
-Fixed crop transports not accounting for the farm work area
-Fixed crops dying in the winter instead of actually increasing yield by absorbing nutrients from the snow as it was intended for winter crops
-Fixed oxen sometimes “ghost plowing” a field when they are waiting on their guide
-Fixed plow and ox sometimes misaligning on 12x game speed
-Fixed farm workers not accounting for oxen plowing the farms in some situation, leading to a lot of unnecessary collisions on the field
-Fixed crop rotation unplowing the fields
-Fixed disbanded mercenary group becoming immediately available again after save/load cycle
-Fixed the trading post export transactions not moving regional wealth between the regions correctly if owned by the same lord
-Fixed paused taverns fulfilling the entertainment requirement
-Fix attempt for never ending fires if a fire was triggered after the building was already on fire
-Fixed problem banners not erasing after an entity gets erased (for instance an animal runs away and leaves a “not enough pasture space” banner)
-Fixed “update task” sometimes triggering before a character gets assigned their region
-Fixed livestock sometimes being unaccommodated after order even though there is stable or pasture space due to being transferred to the region twice (once when buying and once when livestock merchant brings it to the building)
-Fixed livestock traders trading between on-map regions possibly sometimes paying twice because the ownership changing function was called both on pickup of livestock and on dropoff
-Fixed the game getting stuck on the game summary screen infinitely after winning or losing the game
-Fixed “none” people populating the town after a raid sometimes who just stand around waiting forever and possibly crash the game while reloading
-Fixed the blurry desktop icon
-Fixed the save/load menu header not translating after changing the language
-Fixed dead animals triggering the mourning period in burgage plots, halting growth
-Fixed mourning period halting homeless accomodation
-Fixed migration/growth of family members ignoring the 30 day mourning period sometimes
-Fixed the game getting stuck after you click “continue in sandbox” until any main tab is pressed
-Fixed the front lighting not being visible in the retinue editor if bounced light approximation is turned to low or off
-Fixed floating feedback text spawning during the cinematic mode
-Fixed autosave triggering during the cinematic mode
-Fixed “storage full” triggering for wrong buildings sometimes (for example sawpit having 1/1 logs)
-Fix attempt for oxen bringing too many logs to the sawpit and crossing the storage limit
-Fixed free merchants sometimes getting stuck if a trading post was build so close to the edge that a portion of it was outside of any region bounds
-Fixed horse wagon rotations getting a bit too wonky on slopes
-Fixed a bug where a unit could no longer move due to being forever stuck in “waiting for pathfinding to finish” if another unit with a lower squadID got completely destroyed
-Fixed the wrong yarn basket carrying animation
-Fixed traders not importing from on-map regions even though the price is better than buying from tradepoints
-Fixed farm workers & farm oxen stealing planks from fields which are getting “fenced up”
-Fixed “homeless” problem banner not disappearing after upgrading homeless camp to a worker camp
-Fixed animals not getting removed from stable space / pasture space after death
-Fixed animal corpses not disappearing over time
-Added a dirty fix for families moving into homes but not registering correctly and not displaying in the UI, leading to a “secret” family living in one of the burgage plots. The reason is still unknown and being investigated.
Cosmetics:
-Added a new patron saint banner graphics: St Maurice
-Added a carried dead body visualization
-Made debris piles align to ground slope
-Fixed the throw torch animation ending abruptly
-New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Pointy bascinet
-Fixed the armor clipping through the leg of the upgraded retinue puffy sleeve jupon body variation
-New upgraded retinue body variation: Coat of plates
-New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Hounskull bascinet with a gilded cover
-Increased location precision for animals standing in the stables
-Fixed the praying animation
-Fixed the wrong door orientation for LV2 cottage variation B (with a planked gable)
-Adjusted the two handed weapon default idle pose to have a more natural stance
-New militia helmet variation – banded bascinet with a mail aventail
-Fixed some mail armor variants clipping with helmets on T3 militia units (militia mail will get their own unique variations soon)
-Reworked lv2 granary model with proper animated doors

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has set the game’s community yet another challenge: kill 2 billion Automatons to unlock a new Stratagem.

The explosive PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter’s latest Major Order gives players five days to “decommission the targeted number of Automatons”. If the community hits the robot kill count within the set timeframe, the Anti-Tank Mines Stratagem will unlock.

Killing two billion bots in five days sounds like an insurmountable task, but the Helldivers 2 community has form when it comes to mobilizing in response to tough Major Orders. In April, it took Helldivers 2 players less than 24 hours to kill two billion Terminids, but Arrowhead later confirmed the kill count was bugged. This new Major Order, assuming it tracks kills properly, may be a tougher ask.

The Major Order comes after a torrid couple of weeks for Arrowhead, which butted heads with publisher Sony after the PlayStation maker announced plans to force Steam players to link their accounts to PSN. Sony later reversed its decision following a backlash that sparked a review-bombing campaign.

This week’s Premium Warbond has also caused a debate among players about what is considered a lack of fun new weapons. There are now calls from the community for Arrowhead to take more time with the Warbonds in order to make them hit harder. Meanwhile, the director of Helldivers 2 has this week admitted balancing updates sometimes go “too far.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The first human Neuralink implant recipient is playing Slay the Spire, Old School RuneScape, and a range of other popular games by using the implant to translate his neural signals.

Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company also revealed in a new update that a number of the implant’s electrode-bearing threads had retracted from the patient’s brain, leading to a temporary drop off in the performance of the brain-computer interface (BCI).

Back in January, Neuralink co-founder Elon Musk took to X to announce the company had implanted its first ‘N1’ brain chip in the head of a human patient as part of its Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME) study. The patient was later revealed to be 29-year-old American quadrapalegic Noland Arbaugh, who had suffered paralysis below the shoulders after sustaining a spinal injury during a diving accident some eight years ago.

During the surgery, a circular section of skull was removed to grant a specialized robot access to a section of Arbaugh’s brain. The robot used a needle thinner than a human hair to insert a collection of 64 ultra-fine electrode-bearing threads into the grey matter. These newly installed sensors are designed to detect the patient’s neural signals, and send the resulting data up the threads to the main body of the N1 implant, which had been installed in the skull gap created during the surgical procedure. Signals from the implant are then transmitted to a Neuralink Application, which is being trained to decode the intent behind the information and convert it into executable actions, such as the movement of a computer cursor.

Prior to the surgery, Arbaugh had to rely on a mouth stick – an assistive tool that lets the user apply pressure to a touchscreen once placed in the mouth – to play games and interact with the digital world. While this did allow Arbaugh to use an iPad, it came with a range of drawbacks. For example, in order to use the mouth stick he had to be sat upright and have a caregiver present to give him the tool. Furthermore, he couldn’t speak properly while using it, and prolonged use had the potential of triggering spasms and giving rise to pressure sores.

“I thought that the mouth stick was a lot better than BCI a month ago, when we compared them I saw that BCI was just as good if not better and it’s still improving; the games I can play now are leaps and bounds better than previous ones,” Arbaugh was quoted as saying in a Neuralink blog update marking the 100 day anniversary of his surgery. “I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in.”

Neuralink revealed that Arbaugh had recently used the brain-computer interface for 69 hours in a single week, of which 34 hours were for recreational purposes. During this time, Arbaugh used the assistive tech to surf the internet, learn new languages, and play a range of video games, including the rogue-like deckbuilding title Slay the Spire, Old School RuneScape, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Sid Meier’s Civilization 6, all by manipulating the cursor with his mind. The scientists are also working on a bespoke gaming functionality within the Neuralink app, which is being designed to give Arbaugh greater freedom as to how and when he can connect and play games.

In the 100 days following his surgery, Arbaugh has set what Neuralink described as a “new world record for human BCI cursor control.” He is currently able to use the interface to score a value of 8.0 bits-per-second (BPS), which is the measurement used by the scientific community to grade the accuracy and speed of computer cursor movements. For context, Neuralink engineers clocked in around 10 BPS using a physical mouse – a score Arbaugh is looking to best in the coming months.

The company also revealed that an unspecified number of the electrode-bearing threads that had been inserted into Arbaugh’s head during the installation of the N1 implant had “retracted” from his brain in the weeks after the surgery. The thread movement forced the Neuralink scientists to tweak the algorithm responsible for collecting and translating the neural data, which the company says has made up for the loss in performance.

IGN has reached out to Neuralink for comment on whether the withdrawal of the threads was an expected complication, and if the development could in any way impact the patient’s health, and will update this article to reflect any subsequent response.

Moving forward, Neuralink is looking to increase Arbaugh’s ability to control the cursor – partially by combating a known issue known as ‘cursor drift’, which is being combatted through the development of a ‘bias correction’ system – and by adding new functionality. More specifically, the researchers are hoping to allow users to control physical external aides, such as robotic arms, and wheelchairs using nothing but the link, which could in turn help quadriplegic patients gain a greater degree of autonomy.

Catch up on our earlier coverage to get up to date on Neuralink’s road to human trials and past controversies surrounding animal testing complaints.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Mind-bending puzzle metroidvania Animal Well just released yesterday, and already a community of players is tearing the game apart to find its many, many, many, many secrets. Right now, that includes a ridiculously complicated puzzle that requires at least 50 different people to participate. And just one day after launch, the community is on the cusp of completing it.

Warning: Massive spoilers for Animal Well’s “third layer” of secrets follow! If you want to get into its multi-tiered puzzle layers yourself, please shift into reverse and come back later! Read our spoiler-free review instead!

Animal Well effectively contains a three-tiered secret hunt of sorts. The first tier just involves collecting four flames and seeing the credits roll, while the second is a very literal Easter egg hunt. The third, which many players may never discover, is about collecting rabbits hidden in increasingly esoteric ways. While reviewing the game, the small Discord community of reviewers I was in managed to find a total of 12 rabbits collectively in two weeks, and we suspect there are at least 20. In the first 24 hours since the game has been out, the community has handlily pushed that total to 14, and seems to be on the cusp of working together as a group to achieve bunny 15 by participating in a bonkers group puzzle.

Early on in the game, players will pass a massive, 40×10 mural of a pixelated rabbit mid-hop. At first, it seems like this mural is just decoration, but once you enter the late-game rabbit hunt, it becomes increasingly suspicious. Poking around further in the same room reveals a control panel that lets players manipulate the mural’s tiles, and digging even deeper will give players access to a 4×4 grid of tiles similar to the ones on the rabbit mural. But taken alone, it’s not clear what the solution to this is or how the 4×4 grid factors into the big rabbit.

It turns out, every player has a different 4×4 grid of tiles, that when put together, seem to form a complete image. That means in order to finish the new image that needs to replace the existing rabbit, the community needs to work together to assemble a total of 50 unique tiles – and that’s assuming no one shows up with a duplicate. Our review Discord managed to put together almost 20 (including tile contributions from developers Billy Basso and Dan Adelman) before the game was out, but it wasn’t near enough on its own to establish anything close to a meaningful picture. However, in just the first 24 hours since release, the community has figured out the mural’s secret and contributed even more tiles. As I type this, a few intrepid secret hunters are playing around in PhotoShop, Canva, and in-game to assemble the tiles into something readable, and it looks like one in particular (Discord user CruM) might be on the verge of cracking it.

Wacky as this might sound, this is somehow not even the most absurd secret Animal Well has to offer. In the same period as the mural was being solved, players have found even more obscure hidden secrets that may lead to more rabbits or even more esoteric collectibles – and we still don’t know what all the bunnies will do when assembled. The dive into the depths of Animal Well has only begun.

If it’s not evident from my obsession with this secret hunt that I loved Animal Well, I also reviewed it for IGN and gave it a 9/10. I called it “a beautiful, multi-layered puzzle box that’s both fun to simply play around with, and an utter delight to slowly crack open, secret by secret.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.