NYT Connections hints and answers, Thursday Oct 23 Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #864. Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s? Check out the Connections hint for Wednesday 11th February ! Need a hint for today’s Connections on Thursday, 23rd October? It would be nice to complete every Connections puzzle without ever needing a guide, but also a bit unrealistic, wouldn’t it?...

Outrun an alien invasion in kei truck racer DriveCrazy, which has finally motored out of early access Remember, kids: “It is very dangerous to actually run in this way, so please do not imitate it!” Image credit:AMATA Games / TubezGames “This game makes an expression that is impossible in reality,” reads the blurb which pops up when you go to play DriveCrazy’s demo. “Because it is dangerous to drive like this in real life, never imitate....

Palworld devs’ next game is a base-building Dead Cells and Hollow Knight mash-up Never Grave: The Witch And The Curse’s demo is actually pretty all right Image credit:Pocketpair When I first saw Never Grave: The Witch And The Curse rising up the Steam Next Fest charts at the end of last week, I thought, “Oh! That’s a neat Hollow Knight -looking Metroivanida roguelike, I’ll definitely give that a go.” And having played its demo over the weekend, I can confirm: it’s certainly an intriguing little thing that I’ll be keen to keep an eye on when it launches into early access, possibly sometime next month....

Palworld updates coming for broken multiplayer, inaccessible servers and save data bugs Pocketpair working to fix “serious” technical glitches and errors Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Pocketpair When I innocently went on holiday on Thursday evening, Palworld was that flagrant cash-in survival game where you can make Pokemon - sorry, Pals - shoot guns and work on an assembly line. As of this morning, it’s among the most-played games in the world, one of just six to exceed one million concurrent players on Steam....

Peak’s Mesa update lets you shimmy your sandy butt up some sandy buttes, adds tornados and dynamite Remember to slap on the factor 50 Image credit:Aggro Crab / Landfall Right, stop eating your mate for a minute. Peak ’s had a big update from developers Aggro Crab and Landfall Games, and it adds a new Monument Valley -esque location for you to scale the cliffs of. Before you can go mountaineering among the sandy cacti and roaring tornadoes, though, you’ll want to put on some suncream....

Perfect Dark reboot resurfaces with stealth, parkour, and spy gadgetry No release date, alas Image credit:Crystal Dynamics / The Initiatives I never played the original Perfect Dark , but the trailer for the reboot shown during this evening’s Xbox Games Showcase instantly made it the most exciting game I’ve seen during not-E3. It’s first-person, it’s got stealth, it’s got parkour, it’s got hand-to-hand melee combat including slidekicks. It looks like a mashup of Mirror’s Edge and something more immersive sim-y?...

Pilot a shrimp and do battle with giant, eldritch sea monsters in the Armored Core adjacent Shrimp Game A cruel angelfish’s thesis Image credit:GasGod Games, cockydoody, GLUE MAN I hope none of you are allergic to shellfish, because Shrimp Game is exactly what it sounds like: a game about shrimp! And yet that is a complete bastardisation of what it is, for you do not simply play as a shrimp, you are piloting a shrimp, or SHRIMP (Submersible Hydrodynamic Research Integrated Marine Platforms), and you must survive a hellish underwater landscape filled with sea creatures that strive to see your life ended and “Lovecraftian bosses....

Prototype remaster speculation kicks into super gear after a surprise Steam update adds to its credits Fresh references to Activision studios and a Ubisoft Connect version have been added Image credit:Activision Remember Prototype, the super hero game which saw Radical Entertainment explore what might happen if a hoodie enthusiast was given shape-shifting powers? Well, it’s recieved a sudden and mysterious steam update which adds to its credits, fuelling a fresh bout of speculation that a remaster might be on the cards....

Punishing platformer Jump King now has Workshop support and mod tools For those who crave more pain Image credit:Nexile Jump King is a simple, brutal, bastard of a platformer in which you attempt to steer a king towards the top of a single tower using his chargeable jump. Misjudge a particular jump by over- or undercharging it, maybe bounce back off a wall, and you may find yourself tumbling all the way back to the beginning again....

QPAD Flux 65 Model 5 gaming keyboard review A sturdy 65-percenter that makes merry with the magnets Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun QPAD Flux 65 Model 5 specs: Switch type: Mechanical (Gateron linear, magnetic) Connection: Wired Form factor: 65% Extra features: RGB lighting, Rapid Trigger, actuation customisation Price: £120 / $TBC I can only think of two reasons to get a 65% gaming keyboard instead of, at the very least, a tenkeyless : you either have a desk the size of a playing card, or you actually fell for the Alt+F4 trick once, and now harbour an everlasting bigotry towards the Function keys that conspired in your humiliation....

But think of the 15-year-old in a slum Image credit:best tycoons studio Update: Roblox Studios have responded to Eurogamer’s report, in particular addressing the quote that they “hired some teenagers” to clarify that they do not hire minors. You can find Roblox Studios’ full response over on Eurogamer . Original story Roblox allows its players to create and monetise their own creations within its ecosystem. Across the entire breadth of Roblox game makers, a lot of money is made....

Rockstar launch official roleplay mods store where you can spend $67 to turn GTA into Euro Truck Simulator 2 Meanwhile, it’s nearly £100/$132 for a drugs bundle Image credit:Rockstar Games If you’ve ever wanted to spend somewhere in the region of $67/£50 to turn GTA 5 into a fishing simulator, today’s your lucky day. Rockstar-partnered GTA roleplaying server operators Cfx.re - the folks behind FiveM and RedM - have launched the Cfx Marketplace, a store where you can buy a bunch of GTA roleplaying mods, some of which are free and some of which seem pretty damn expensive....

Roguelike shooter Killer Bean brings its mix of Just Cause physics, Matrix gunfights and PS2 energy to early access this summer Solo developer Jeff Lew worked on The Matrix Reloaded - and it shows Image credit:Jeff Lew I’m not familiar with the proto-internet cartoon Killer Bean , but Graham assures me it’s fairly important in the history of online animation. Regardless, I’ve been won over by the upcoming video game of the same name from original creator Jeff Lew, which looks to blend together Just Cause stunt shenanigans, John Woo slo-mo gunfights and the energy of a third-person action game you would’ve found in a bargain bin for the PlayStation 2 in 2002....

Romeo Is A Dead Man doesn’t have a release date because of “that one game”, and you already know it’s GTA 6 What else could it be? Image credit:Grasshopper Manufacture It’s been quite a while since Grasshopper Manufacture put out a completely original game, almost a decade in fact, with 2016’s Let It Die . Since then there’s been a couple No More Heroes , but during a presentation held last night from some company I’ve never heard of, PlayStation I think it was, the developer revealed something wholly new: Romeo Is A Dead Man ....

RPS presents Steam Deck Academy: a grand repository of Steam Deck knowledge, made simple This’ll learn ya Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun Welcome to (a possibly overdue update to) RPS’ Steam Deck Academy, where the hot, plasticky vent fumes of knowledge and understanding are snorted directly into the brain-nostrils of the technologically curious. Do you have, or are considering, a Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED ? Want to know how to get the most out of it?...

RPS Verdict: The Game Awards 2025 Take a deep Geoff Image credit:The Game Awards Last night saw the Peacock theatre in LA fill up with prominent game industry folk all eager to be blasted with trailers for four hours straight. We weren’t in the room for The Game Awards 2025, but half of the team stayed up to be to be assaulted with announcements in real-time via livestream, while the other half caught up on the barrage this morning....

Schim review: plopping between shadows as a polterfrog makes for a very comforting puzzler Hop to it Image credit:Extra Nice/Playism Developer: Ewoud van der Werf, Nils Slijkerman Publisher: Extra Nice, Playism Release: July 18th 2024 On: Windows From: Steam Price: TBC Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, Windows 11 Lots of games use frogs as a means to appeal to those who believe they are cute, me being one of those people....

Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion looks like a boomer shooter for the Newgrounds generation, and it’s out next month As opposed to Slicey Slicey Human Withdrawal Image credit:Bubby Darkstar I feel like every time I write about shooters , I always have to add a caveat along the lines of, “I don’t really like shooters… but!” There often is a but, because occasionally one of ’em rolls around that feels like it just gets me, you know?...

Skull And Bones is now in open beta, almost as if Ubisoft intend to finally release it Play before the multiplayer pirate boat game ’launches’ next week, wink wink Image credit:Ubisoft Continuing their great prank of pretending they plan to release Skull And Bones , Ubisoft today launched an open beta for their multiplayer open-world pirate boat game. The free beta will run until Sunday night, after which Ubisoft will presumably delay the game for another seventeen years while once again redesigning the whole thing....

Sons Of The Forest review: beautiful survival horror with a few missteps The real treasure was the friends we ate along the way Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Endnight Games Developer: Endnight Games Publisher: Newnight Release: Out now On: Windows From: Steam Price: £25/€29/$30 Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-10875H, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 2080 Super, Windows 11 There are moments where Sons Of The Forest matches the sublime paranoia of Subnautica . There’s that same lurching, exquisite tension as you delve deeper and deeper into darkness where you are not welcome, supplies dwindling, footfall echoing, monstrosities skittering about in the black....