Kidsmoyve

A new day for democracy, a new Helldivers 2 patch. Though this one is perhaps arriving to a more muted reception than usual, as both Arrowhead Game Studios and the game’s players lick their wounds following last week’s big controversy over Sony account linkage. A throwdown which ended in a gigantic u-turn, bodies in the road, and a reverse review-bombing.

Such is the drama, you’d be forgiven for forgetting there’s still a galactic war going on, and Arrowhead’s latest patch addresses a few annoyances that have cropped up along the way: as well as including one quiet revelation.

Remember how the Helldivers collectively annihilated two billion bugs in less than 24 hours? What a great day for democracy though, even at the time, some wondered if game m…

One of our favorite RTX 4070-powered gaming laptops is back on sale. Best Buy is again offering a deal on an Asus ROG Zephyrus 16, equipped with an RTX 4070 and a 240Hz 1600p display, all for $1,500, a $450 reduction from its original price. Although this laptop was discounted a few months ago at $1,600, it quickly sold out before we could make a post about it. 

Fortunately, there appears to be an ample supply at Best Buy this time, and the retailer has lowered the price by an additional $100.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus 16 is a 16-inch laptop with an Intel Core i9 13900H processor and an RTX 4070 graphics card. Anticipate achieving impressive frame rates at 1080p and 1600p (yes, it boasts a 16:10 aspect ratio). 

On the memory side, the 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB N…

Magic’s Lost Caverns of Ixalan set is a return to the dinosaur-hunted jungles of Ixalan, but it’s also a return to a theme Magic has tinkered with before: the world underground. As head designer Mark Rosewater mentioned in his Making Magic column, the dungeon cards from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms presented one angle on underground exploration in card form, but The Lost Caverns of Ixalan tackles another, one with more of a focus on “resource acquisition and the building/upgrading of items.” To say the quiet part out loud: it’s loosely inspired by Minecraft.

That means there’s a Diamond Pick-Axe card, and a new ability called Craft, which lets you transform artifacts into more powerful cards. There’s no “Mine” mechanic but there is Descend, which triggers various effects whe…

Released in 2020, crafting, base-building, and mining sandbox Hydroneer has been an indie success story that sold upwards of 500,000 copies as of 2022. Now it has a full expansion, Journey to Volcalidus, that dumps a huge new environment to mine and profit from: The island of Volcalidus, which is “over 6 times the size of the original island” and comes complete with a town to rebuild.

The expansion also has a huge new crane truck, a slew of new deep-underground resources to mine, and a bunch of lava-powered machinery that harnesses the island’s volcano to get work done a bit easier. There are also new systems around augmenting your tools and machines for extra effect while crafting them.

The expansion comes alongside a big patch of free quality of life updates and fixes for …

My last few weeks with Abiotic Factor have been a cure for survival crafting burnout. I thought I’d never want to look at another crafting bench again, but it turns out, all I really needed was a genuinely fresh perspective on survival crafting to get on board. What first drew me in was Abiotic’s setting, a post-disaster underground lab inspired by Half-Life’s Black Mesa facility.

You won’t find choppable trees in the cold, echoing halls of the Gate Cascade Research Facility. You can’t forage for berries or build a log cabin, but you can spend your last dollar on a vending machine root beer and smash up a CRT monitor for its useful innards. You don’t play as a blank slate or seasoned survivalist—you’re a schlubby scientist with no idea what they’re up against, a fact you’re …

More and more games include cooking as a minigame or activity these days, to which I say: Yay! I love cooking in games, despite being a terrible chef in real life.

Now along comes Magical Delicacy, a cooking platformer, to which I say: Wait, what?

My eyes aren’t deceiving me. Magical Delicacy is a “Metroidvania-inspired wholesome cooking game” and that alone is enough to get me interested, because I don’t think I’ve ever played a cooking platformer before. It doesn’t hurt that the pixel art and animation look fantastic, too. Check out the trailer above, shown at the Wholesome Direct today.

You play as Flora, an aspiring witch who moves to a new town called Grat, which is built along a cliffside (hence all the platforming you’ll be doing). As you explore the town you’ll…