The Mosquito Gang pits four blood-sucking insect players against a human who just wants to do the dishes Also, the mosquitoes can drive cars Image credit:Space Raccoon Game Studio Every year, the fruit flies and mosquitoes return to my kitchen, drawn to the illicit aroma of unlidded pasta sauce and the rank embroidery of carbonised toast around my cooker. Every year, I attempt to remove them non-violently by building intricate traps out of vinegar bottles, or performing slow-motion kung fu punches with a jug....

The NYT Crossword answers for Tuesday, September 30th 2025 Get a bit of help with the NYT Crossword puzzle Image credit:The New York Times This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s NYT Crossword guide? Check out the NYT Crossword answers for Sunday, October 19th 2025 ! Need a hint for today’s NYT Crossword on Tuesday, 30th September? Well, we have them! All of them, in fact, so you can get yourself out of any pickle you may find yourself in during today’s NYT Crossword....

The NYT Crossword answers for Wednesday, September 10th 2025 Get a bit of help with the NYT Crossword puzzle Image credit:The New York Times This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s NYT Crossword guide? Check out the NYT Crossword answers for Sunday, October 19th 2025 ! Need a hint for today’s NYT Crossword on Wednesday, 10th September? How convenient! Because we have them all ready and waiting for you here in this Rock Paper Shotgun Crossword Companion....

The Steam Deck is one of the best ways to play Elden Ring, and now Shadow of the Erdtree too Proton fixes (and the right settings) go a long way Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun Steam Deck Academy brings together all our guides and explainers on getting the most out of your Steam Deck, no student loans or sweaty dormitories required. Update: Whelp, spoke too soon. Apparently some Steam Deck players are seeing an “Innapropriate activity detected” message upon launching Elden Ring, blocking them from playing online....

The Sunday Papers Image credit:RPS Sundays are for holding talks with the Squirmles to try and talk them down from a diplomatic incident after my cat’s various war crimes. Before that, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!) A.I. Isn’t Going To Make Art, writes Ted Chiang for the New Yorker (paywalled unless you refresh the page a bunch of times). Many novelists have had the experience of being approached by someone convinced that they have a great idea for a novel, which they are willing to share in exchange for a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds....

This year’s Game Awards will accept DLC, new game seasons, expansions, and presumably Kojima’s MS Paint doodles Long shadow Image credit:The Game Awards Are DLCs, expansion packs and remakes/ remasters eligible? The Game Awards aims to recognize the best creative and technical work each year, irrespective of the format of that content’s release. Expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories, if the jury deems the new creative and technical work to be worthy of a nomination....

Tiny Garden now has a Steam demo in which you can grow plants and customise your Polly Pocket Or generic brand Polly Pocket equivalent Image credit:Ao Norte Tiny Garden is a puzzle game about planting flowers and crops you can then sell to buy seeds for new types of flowers and crops. That would be charming enough on its own, but your agricultural endeavours are set inside a Polly Pocket-style toy, with crops also able to be exchanged for furniture with which to decorate your diorama home....

Top up your Steam Deck or ROG Ally X with this hidden 3TB SanDisk Ultra discount Buy two and save big on handheld-ready storage. Image credit: SanDisk SanDisk Ultra microSD with SD Adapter - 1.5TB (UK) Offer Price £92.99 / 2x for £148.90 (was £119.99 each) See here In my opinion, this is one of the best bang-for-buck upgrades you can make if you’re running anything from a Steam Deck to a ROG Ally or the original Nintendo Switch....

Try the demo of this retro-style point and click adventure and embrace the rainbow Twilight Oracle lives life in full colour Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Cosmic Void I mentioned this in a What Are We Playing? and the podcast last week , but I’ve been playing a point and click puzzle game called Twilight Oracle , which is out at the end of the month. It’s cool! It reminds me a lot of Legends Of Kyrandia, in that it doesn’t need to explain why stuff in the world is like it is, it just is ....

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 cannot possibly be on sale now A hopefully not actually unkind development recap Image credit:Paradox / The Chinese Room Mere moments before release, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been delayed by the occult implosion of developers The Chinese Room, seemingly triggered by a last-ditch request from Paradox Interactive to add a microtransaction system and start charging for every bitten neck. There is nothing left of The Chinese Room now....

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader review: engrossing, obscure and absolutely exhausting In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only More Image credit:Owlcat Games/RockPaperShotgun Developer: Owlcat Games Publisher: Owlcat Games Release: December 7th 2023 On: Windows From: Steam , Epic Games Store , GOG Price: £42.99/€50/$54.68 Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7 12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060, Windows 11 In the festively grim universe of Warhammer 40,000, space is sometimes racked by Warp storms – terrible cyclones of Chaos energy that have a catastrophic effect on imperial communications....

We could have lived in a world where Hideo Kojima made a Matrix game, if only someone had told him he was offered to make one “In all these 26 years, no one ever told me such a conversation had taken place” Image credit:Warner Bros. For as video gamey a series as The Matrix is, it is a touch surprising there have only been a handful of actual games. Obviously the one that makes most sense is The Matrix Online, what other genre but an MMO could The Matrix could be?...

We Harvest Shadows is both a rustic PT and a first-person Stardew Valley Don’t stay up too late Image credit:David Wehle I observe several picture changes during my time with the demo. By day, the tunnel of doors appears inverted, perhaps symbolising the subterranean retreat or Tarot-style reversal of whatever supernatural element it registers. Sometimes the door at the end of the tunnel is slightly ajar. And sometimes, the tunnel of doors is replaced by a glaring Rorschach rictus that is all the worse for the silence of its scream....

We need some better terms for GenAI output - “slop” is too benign Howl’s puking castle Image credit:Snail Games USA Earlier this month, Snail Games put out a widely and justifiably clowned-on genAI trailer for Ark: Survival Evolved ’s Aquatica DLC. Much reporting on the incident, including my own, used some variation of “slop” in the headline. This has likely been true for some time, but it made me notice that ‘slop’ had evolved from a common adjective into the realm of de facto terminology....

What are we all playing this weekend? Well? Do tell! Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/London: J. Dickins, 1827 There’s a fox in the back garden outside my window right this second, dragging its bum along the grass like Santa’s Little Helper. Thankfully I love foxes, and care little for the garden. None of this has anything to do with games, of course. I just thought you’d like to know. Jeremy I will be playing nothing this weekend, for finishing our Wuchang: Fallen Feathers boss guide has broken me....

What are we all playing this weekend? Well? Do tell! Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/London, New York: Macmillan and Co., 1907 I’m fresh back from my holiday with the family, and I miss my cats already. My partner and I will therefore be beelining to the local cat cafe, and spending hours there meowing at some very unimpressed-looking furry faces. But first, I’d very dearly love to know what everyone else will be getting up to this weekend....

What are we all playing this weekend? Well? Do tell! I am slightly kicking myself for not taking Friday off to chase what was possibly the final good snow of winter. Well, I say “good snow”, it wasn’t great. It quickly turned to sleet in many places and was carried by monstrous gusts in others. I likely would have ended up sodden and sullen halfway up a hill. But what if…!...

What’s on your bookshelf: Fucksweeper and HoloVista’s Nadya Lev read-only Image credit:oldbookillustrations.com Booked For The Week is our (theoretically) weekly chat with industry folk about the books they love, have loved, and are hoping to love in the future Hello reader who is also a reader! It’s time to upend another sackful of tomes over your head, care of another game developer. This week, we’re talking to Nadya Lev - co-founder of New York studio Aconite, and developer of the splendidly unsexy Fucksweeper , which I had the pleasure of trying not to be seen playing in a crowded airport lounge in 2024....

What’s on your bookshelf?: author and games writer-abouter Alice Bell read-only Image credit:oldbookillustrations.com Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! You likely already know that books are made from trees, but did you know that Kindles are made from discarded tree asset packs? My uncle, who is a tree, told me that....

Wield hag magic against glitchy pixel dungeons in this glorious migraine of a platformer Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon Crystal is out now, has a demo Image credit:pets club 2 / Rock Paper Shotgun In these days of combing online imagery for symptoms of genAI “hallucination”, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, mutant video game visuals were beautiful. There’s a whole genre of art dedicated to them. Here to remind us is Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon Crystal, a gorgeously scruffy 2D platformer in which an old lady explores a big magic cellar, hitting graphics card malfunctions with a broom....