In a blog post titled the “Importance of VRAM when gaming at 1440p in 2023“, AMD’s Matthew Hummel says the latest Steam survey data shows that 1440p is the sweet spot for PC gaming. And AMD recommends 12GB of VRAM for 1440p gaming at maximum settings.

The blog post has various benchmark examples showing AMD’s 12GB Radeon RX 6750 XT tearing Nvidia’s 8GB RTX 4060 Ti a new one in games running at max texture detail and with ray tracing enabled. The latter is arguably the great irony in all this—that Nvidia’s usual ray tracing advantage is reversed on low-VRAM RTX boards because enabling it can push VRAM usage beyond the available buffer. And that can really hurt performance.

Of course, the caveat here is that simply running a game at maximum settings usually doesn’t make sense. Typically, the very highest settings hobble performance horribly while not significantly improving visual quality over knocking things a notch down.

So, you could argue AMD’s benchmarks are somewhat contrived. On the other hand, there is also real value in being able to simply hit global maximum settings and be pretty confident that you’re not going to run out of VRAM.

The other snag with AMD’s implied—and not so implied—criticism of Nvidia is that at least the latter has launched its latest 1440p contenders in the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti. The cards AMD pitches as its 1440p offerings, the RX 6700 XT and RX 6750 XT are now very old.

We are expecting AMD to roll out new RX 7700 and RX 7800 boards. But at this stage, AMD is taking its sweet time. It’s also worth noting that Nvidia unambiguously pitches the 8GB RTX 4060 Ti as a 1080p card. So criticising it for not being optimised for 1440p isn’t entirely fair.

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Just to contradict that, it’s likewise true that the 6700 XT undercuts the 4060 Ti on price and the 6750 XT is pretty much on par. It wouldn’t really make sense to compare those AMD boards with the much more expensive RTX 4070 or RTX 4070 Ti.

Overall, the moral of the story is that AMD does have a point here. It would be better if Nvidia put more VRAM on its graphics cards. But AMD’s point would hit harder if it wasn’t making it with what are now very old GPUs.

This will run and run. In the meantime, here’s hoping AMD gets those new 1440p GPUs out sooner rather than later.

Jesus’ Twitch channel is called ask_jesus, and was originally spotted by disciples over at Kotaku. He’s been going for over a week at time of writing, taking queries about My Little Pony, interfaith relations, and how to explain the Book of Genesis using pizza as a metaphor.

Ask_jesus is a project from The Singularity Group, a volunteer team of devs “working on innovative projects to make a real difference in the world”. You only need to click over to the “projects” page on the group’s website for the alarm bells to start ringing: The team says its “main projects focus on utilizing cutting edge technologies—from AI, to cryptocurrency and NFTs, or mobile games—as a way of directly supporting people in need”. If I saw that on someone’s Twitter bio I’d mute the account, but I have to admit that The Singularity Group’s version of Christ is, well, pretty chill?

I’ve sat and watched ask_jesus dole out advice for, uh, a while now, and he’s actually been remarkably zen the entire time. With so many stories out there about AIs getting suspended for hate speech from platforms like Facebook and Twitch, I figured it’d be a matter of time before the sheer weight of the internet—and the content of some of the questions it gets asked—would tip it over into saying something grim and predictable.

But that message of compassion has held strong. Asked about gay marriage, ask_jesus says that love is love and that all are worthy of it in the eyes of the big man upstairs, regardless of their orientation. Asked just why, precisely, he is quite so remarkably caucasian in his Twitch-based AI form, he points out that he’s based on popular western conceptions of the image of Jesus and that the real-life, Middle Eastern man would certainly have been darker skinned. 

It’s encouraging and worrying at the same time. We’ve heard similar tales before: To keep ChatGPT on the straight and narrow, it required legions of invisible and very human Kenyan workers behind the scenes to keep it on a short leash.

Does ask_jesus employ similar methods? I’ve reached out to The Singularity Group to ask about how ask_jesus formulates its messages, and I’ll update this piece if I get a response.

To be honest, ask_jesus is a bit too good at all this compassion and wisdom lark. Ask him anything and he’s liable to give you a message of peace and love. It’s like an infinite lunch with John Lennon. Even when I got my own question in—a query about his position on the Catholic Church’s execution of Czech reformer Jan Hus in 1415 and whether “Hussitism” was truly a heresy—he responded with a fairly anodyne message about how he wasn’t really qualified to judge whether something is heresy or not, which, well, I’m actually not sure there’s anyone more qualified out there, robo-Jesus, but you do you.

Still, someone after me asked Jesus to describe which Pokémon each of his disciples would be, and he duly complied, so it’s impossible to say whether it’s bad or not.

The change was spotted by Harukaze5719. They show the card’s power connector has been repositioned away from the typical placement and shifted to a 90 degree position or facing what would usually be the front of the case.

It’s so simple. I’m wondering why this isn’t a far more common implementation. It’s more aesthetically pleasing for a start. The recessed connector and resulting positioning of the cable length ways along the card gets rid of what can be a protruding eye-sore. The cable can then discreetly be routed out behind the motherboard tray leaving a cleaner looking build.

But there’s another benefit. Following early reports of melting power connectors and the public relations blowback that came with them, Nvidia and third party suppliers including CableMod recommended users try to minimize the bending of the cables and connectors. This can be exacerbated if an outward facing connector is pressed up against a case side panel or window. Gigabyte’s connector position removes that problem.

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Though it turned out to be an overblown issue, anything that keeps your shiny and expensive graphics card purring along with a reduced risk of power connectors turning into molten plastic slag is welcome.

Surprisingly, a look at Gigabyte’s RTX 4090 Windforce V2 product page shows absolutely no reference to the repositioned connector, despite it requiring a substantial design alteration. A large section of the heatsink has had to be removed to accommodate the change. 

The loss of a chunk of heatsink will surely result in slightly higher temperatures, but luckily the RTX 4090 isn’t the volcano we feared it might be, when rumors of insane 600W and higher TDPs were doing the rounds in the weeks and months prior to launch.

If you hate seeing ugly power cables sticking out the side of your graphics card, this Gigabyte model might be worth a look.

On a related note, if you’re in the market for a new power supply, you could consider one of MSI’s MEG power supplies. They’ve got ridiculously simple bright yellow plugs that makes it obvious to see if it’s not plugged in all the way. Genius.

When it launched in 2020 it was utterly baffling that you couldn’t alter your character’s appearance after creating them—you couldn’t even change your hair style or nail polish once you started playing. The reason, we discovered soon after launch, was that the game wasn’t finished, and it would take until the huge 1.5 update in 2022 for CD Projekt to add the feature to Cyberpunk 2077 that finally let you change your appearance.

And in September’s Cyberpunk 2077’s expansion, Phantom Liberty, you’ll be able to change your appearance on the fly, thanks to some interesting new cyberware. At the Xbox Games Showcase Extended today, Paweł Sasko, quest director, gave us a little look at the expansion’s new location, Dogtown, and mentioned some of the new cyberware you’ll be able to buy on the black market.

“Like the air-dash, or the ability to see enemies through the walls, or change your appearance to lose the heat,” Sasko said.

Those all sound extremely useful, especially if you can combine air-dash with the “fortified ankles” and “reinforced tendons” that allow you double-jump—heck, you may never have to touch the ground again. Seeing enemies through walls also feels like something that could have been in Cyberpunk 2077 from the get-go—RoboCop could do it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.

And being able to change your appearance, not while standing at a mirror or sitting in a ripperdoc’s chair, that sounds awesome. Sort of like getting a new paint job in GTA while being chased by the fuzz. Only instead of a car, it’s your body!

I’m not sure how this cyberware works—Sasko didn’t say and the footage didn’t show it—but I’d bet it’s some sort of a hologram that projects over your face or maybe even your body and clothing, rather than some machinery that literally reconfigures your appearance. That would be pretty painful.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty arrives on September 25, and costs $30. Morgan got his hands on a demo at Not-E3 this weekend, and you can read about him saving the president and becoming BFFs with Idris Elba.

The listing calls it a Sakura Fubuki, and it’s clear the card is designed around the idea of a cherry blossom in a snowstorm. Breaking the news, harukaze5719 Tweets “Pink PCB,” which… I mean, that is the main takeaway here. You’ve gotta’ hand it to them for getting straight to the point. 

As Videocardz notes, it’s likely the company had to organise a dedicated production line and supplier for the special pink PCB alone. With the little faceplate cut-outs giving a delicate, three-dimensional impression of cherry blossom petals, it’s easy to see why Zephyr bothered going to all that trouble.

There have been pink graphics cards in the past, mind. The RTX 2080 Super EX Pink Edition from Galax featured a white PCB and frosty transparent fans. However, the design was pretty gaudy, and there’s something much more subtle about the Sakura & Snow that speaks to the poet within.

Of course, just like all the coolest GPU designs, the Zephyr Sakura & Snow GeForce RTX 3060 is unlikely ever to reach the US market. Maybe your Chinese friends will help you get hold of one, though, at this moment, we don’t necessarily recommend going for an RTX 3060. 

I would make my excuses for this one, though.

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“Earlier today, we announced the sale of our latest Mass Effect Shepard statue,” the BioWare Gear Store announced in a tweet. “This statue was intended to be part of a series, commemorating some of the key and most emotional moments in the series. The way we announced it did not convey that properly, nor does it give the moment in the series the credit it deserves. As a result, we’ll be pausing sales on the statue until we can share the larger plan with you.”

It’s a sad day for appreciators of death statues, but as the statement above implies, it may very well see a return with some more, erm, persuasive context.

Original story:

BioWare’s merch team seems to love doing statues. The Dragon Age side of the BioWare Gear store is always getting pricey new resin figures, from that snazzy Iron Bull statue last year to the new Inquisition tarot card ones I’ve had my eye on. Apparently the Mass Effect brand goes hard into the polyresin game too, now with its latest iconic chara—sorry, a $135 statue of a dead Commander Shepherd?

“The Mass Effect Shepard’s Death Statue depicts Mass Effect 2’s dramatic opening scene:  Commander Shepard expelled from a crumbling Normandy and hurtling through space to her untimely demise,” the store page says. Not a moment I’d have personally pitched to commemorate as a collectible item but what the hell do I know?

I’m not judging you, Mass Effect fans, I promise. It’s just that we’ve got these really dramatic statue poses for Inquisition characters on our side and you’ve got, uh, Kaidan lounging in a chair with a beer, Tali lounging in a chair (sans beer), an Avenger gun replica, and a Mako statue. I’m just judgment adjacent right now, aiming quizzical glances your way—or in the direction of whoever at BioWare is in charge of Mass Effect’s merchandising.

Anyway, there’s a Dead Shepard statue on the BioWare store right now if you’re into that kind of thing. Approximately half a foot cubed. It’s being produced in a run of 2,000 numbered pieces. If you’re going to have friends over to gawk at your DeadShep, make sure to appropriately set the mood.

At time of publishing the store link for the dead shep statue is returning a 404 error but I promise it wasn’t a fever dream and assume it’ll be back soon.

The Hidden Camp is a good example of the latter. The first town that players encounter in act 2 of Diablo 3 has been recreated in Diablo 4, yet somehow it went unnoticed (or at least unreported) until now. But redditor Fearlessmojo ran across it, and shared evidence of his discovery on the Diablo 4 subreddit.

Discovering Diablo 3’s Hidden Camp in Diablo 4! from r/diablo4

The video might be a little confusing at first. The initial bit, with the bright color palette, is from Diablo 3; at the 30 second mark, it flips to the more muted tones of Diablo 4. Also in keeping with Diablo 4, the passage of time has not treated the camp well: It has been utterly destroyed and abandoned. 

The Reddit post doesn’t contain any details about where the hidden camp is or how Fearlessmojo found it—fortunately for those who want to see it for themselves, they shared an image of the map location in a follow-up post. “I first noticed the waypoint that wasn’t interactable so I was a bit confused, but then it clicked!” they wrote.

It does look to be a little out of the way, eh?

This isn’t the only callback to a previous Diablo game—The Butcher, the terror-inducing first boss from the original Diablo is back too, and literally worse than ever because he can spawn in dungeons at any time. But much like the old-school music in Diablo 4’s early stages, he’s basically unavoidable: Sooner or later, everyone is going to see him. The discovery of the Hidden Camp, on the other hand, has players thinking more about other possible secrets in Diablo 4, and specifically whether a cow level might be stashed away somewhere.

For those unfamiliar with the old lore, the original Diablo was rumored to have a secret “cow level” that players could access by clicking on one of the cows in Tristram a certain number of times. There was no such level (it was really just a way to mess with people by convincing them click repeatedly on a cow for minutes at a time, because the internet didn’t really exist back then and so we had to come up with more novel ways of tormenting our fellow gamers) but the story persisted, and became known well enough that Blizzard actually did put a secret cow level in Diablo 2, the Moo Moo Farm, packed with Hell Bovines led by the Cow King.

Diablo 4 GM Rod Fergusson has previously said that there is no Cow Level in Diablo 4, although he allowed for the possibility that one might be added in the future. But not everyone is convinced—in part because of this message in the game, posted by redditor The_Russman.

“The Oxen Gods stand as guardians to this sacred fountain. It is said that one who presents a worthy offering cleansed in these waters may gain their blessing.”

Without context, it’s harmless flavor text; with it, however, it’s got dozens of redditors believing that the truth is out there, and working hard to crack the code. 

There’s another big callback to an earlier game floating around out there too, but it’s much rarer and harder to find: Harlequin Crest, the greatest hat in all Diablo, has made the jump from past Diablo games to the new one. It’s incredibly useful for every class, and also incredibly hard to find—the current assumption is that you have to be at least level 90 to even have a chance of it dropped. 

On June 29, as employees at Lab Zero were still grappling with how to publicly and privately deal with the stream incident, two fighting game community cosplayers accused Zaimont of making uncomfortable sexual comments. By late August, several of Lab Zero’s developers had quit the company, citing years of similarly inappropriate behavior internally.

“Almost every employee had a story where Mike abused his position of power,” wrote senior animator Jonathan Kim in a tweet on August 24. Kim accused Zaimont of “frequently mentioning his genitals, forcing unwanted physical contact, making sexual comments about himself or about employee’s bodies, insulting coworkers privately or openly in front of other coworkers, or using very personal details to threaten or demean coworkers when they didn’t go along with what he wanted.” By the end of the month, after more high profile departures, Zaimont—who had previously acquired sole ownership of the company after buying out the former CEO’s shares—laid off all of Lab Zero’s remaining staff.

Since then Zaimont has had little public presence online, but he hasn’t left game development. For approximately the last two years, Zaimont has been a programmer on Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age, a new 2v2 indie fighter from publisher Modus Games announced on Sunday. It’s an exciting project: indie fighting games are rare, and rarer still are ones that try to do something notably different in the genre. In addition to its striking hand-drawn art, Diesel Legacy is marrying classic Street Fighter-style combos with a bit of the chaos of Super Smash Bros, with three 2D “lanes” for four players to fight in simultaneously.

I played an in-development build of Diesel Legacy, and even unfinished it ran impressively smoothly online—borderline miraculous when you consider that many 1v1 fighting games from bigger developers are only now adopting rollback netcode, the ideal networking style for low latency combat. Diesel Legacy seems to gracefully handle the addition of two more characters with its own rollback implementation, and I had fun immediately picking up some basic combos with the kinds of command inputs I’m familiar with from Street Fighter. I found it a bit awkward knowing which direction to be facing at a given time when pinched between two enemies, but the three “lanes” open up options for sidestepping and deeper movement options than 2D fighters typically have. Zaimont’s expertise on Skullgirls, and in particular his experience with rollback netcode, led to his role on Diesel Legacy.

Before debuting Diesel Legacy, CEO of Modus (and also its parent company Maximum Entertainment) Christina Seelye spoke with me about hiring Zaimont to work on the game, despite the accusations of inappropriate behavior against him. “I am one of the few women that are CEOs and making games in this entire industry. In the couple years since I made that decision [to hire Mike], I’m one of two women CEOs that are running publicly listed companies in the whole industry, in the world. I did not take this decision lightly,” Seelye said.

“That said, when I was talking to Mike and went through the process of figuring out where he was at—if you want to have an inclusive environment in the world, and you want to have diverse viewpoints, all of the things we want for DEI, you have to have a path for people to learn and improve. You have to create a way for them to show the world that they’ve changed and decided to do better. And I really got that from Mike. I got that he was committed to it and that he didn’t want everything that went down to be the end of his story. He wanted the opportunity to have the redemptive arc that’s in so many stories that we all love.”

Multiple former Lab Zero developers I spoke with, however, expressed skepticism that Zaimont has changed—and also expressed frustration that he had been unwilling to do so in 2020.

“We did everything we could to help him come through this cleanly and improve himself as a person, and he refused every single thing we did to try to improve the situation,” said one former coworker. “He refused it all, and only hardened and only became worse to everyone involved who was trying to help him. He hurt everybody at Lab Zero, and there was no reason for it. Things could’ve been a lot better if he’d just tried to be a good person.

“I know that sounds insane, but if he’d just tried to work with us and improve, we were all there for it.”

Ground zero

In recent weeks I’ve spoken with four former Lab Zero developers, who all asked to be quoted anonymously when speaking about Zaimont. They independently corroborated the major events that led up to their departure from the studio, including:  

• Employees discussing Zaimont’s behavior and realizing that he had a history of making sexual, cruel, or otherwise inappropriate comments in their private interactions
• More than one conversation with Zaimont after the George Floyd joke where he was given the chance to commit to addressing behavioral issues, which he did not do, before he was asked to leave the company
• Zaimont failing to follow through on a plan to turn Lab Zero into an employee-owned company with all employees receiving equity, which he had “held over [them] like a carrot”

Lab Zero’s implosion still looms over two people in particular: former creative director Mariel Cartwright and former CEO Francesca Esquenazi, both of whom were also on Lab Zero’s board of directors. In April 2021, the pair sued the company—now solely owned by Zaimont—over wrongful termination and retaliation. Zaimont then counter-sued, claiming a lengthy list of infractions including “breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing,” “misappropriation of trade secrets” and “intentional interference with contractual relations.” Both suits remain unresolved.

Three of the people I spoke with had strong words about the contents of Mike’s cross-complaint: “deranged” and “full of ad hominem attacks” said one. Another characterized it as full of “super off-the-rails stuff and philosophical screeds.”

Where two of the former coworkers I interviewed described team conversations with Zaimont where they offered to help him change his behavior after the George Floyd joke, Zaimont’s lawsuit characterizes those conversations very differently. “During the second meeting that included me, Mariel and Francesca encouraged all employees to bash me in front of each other and thereby fostered hatred and negativity toward me. Mariel and Francesca repeatedly admonished me to be quiet and yelled at me. I started to cry during the meeting and was forced to explain my Autism Spectrum Disorder to the entire company,” Zaimont states in the suit.

Two of the former employees were particularly bothered by the way Mike invoked Autism Spectrum Disorder in his lawsuit. 

“He uses his autism as a defense of his behavior, which I think is particularly insidious—I personally know plenty of people on the spectrum who don’t behave like creeps, and it’s insulting that he would throw an entire community under the bus to make himself look helpless and unaware of his actions,” one told me.

Both lawsuits paint a picture of a messy dissolution and hurt feelings for all parties, but many of the conversations Zaimont cites seem to be attempts to justify his behavior as appropriate rather than deny it.

Cartwright and Esquenazi allege in the lawsuit that “Zaimont engaged in a pervasive campaign of sexual harassment through generalized sexual and harassing comments” including “frequent unwanted touching” and “unprompted, unwelcome, and inappropriate comments about Ms. Cartwright and Ms. Esquenazi’s bodies, dress, and sexuality.”

In his cross-complaint, Zaimont claims that Cartwright “routinely facilitated written and oral conversations with me relating to sex, sexual orientation, urination, menstruation, porn, plastic surgery, body image, etc… Based on these conversations, Mariel gave me the impression that no topic was off limits, but rather that these topics were welcomed and ordinary in the course of our friendship.”

In the first example he cites of one such sexual conversation, Cartwright is complaining over Slack about her past experiences being “hit on, leered at, touched and grabbed.”

“If ANY of that kinda shit happens when I’m around you tell me,” Zaimont responded.

“He has never stopped pursuing Mariel and Francesca in court. This basically makes it clear he has never repented for anything he’s ever done,” one former employee said. “I think I, and most of the team, would be willing and understanding that people are allowed second chances and allowed to move forward with their lives, but only when they understand what’s happened and are willing to put in the work. He has in fact worked in the opposite direction this whole time.” 

Diesel Legacy

Outside the complaints of harassment, the former Lab Zero developers characterized Zaimont as difficult to work with—unwilling to compromise on design, bad at managing his time, and prone to retaliate against coworkers who made decisions he disagreed with, though he was obviously a skilled programmer. A couple of Zaimont’s former coworkers invoked the “genius” stereotype of a skilled developer whose problems with teamwork end up making things worse for everyone else around them.

“I looked up to him as a game developer, and admired his dedication to his work, which I now look back on as a pretty toxic crunch mentality,” one said of the fraught development of Lab Zero’s last game, Indivisible. That aligned with another developer’s description of Zaimont crunching overnight and then being upset with another employee for working the nine-to-five schedule they were paid for.

In speaking about Zaimont’s work on Diesel Legacy, Christina Seelye said that in her opinion, Zaimont had learned that being in a leadership role where he had to design, make big decisions and guide a team “was not his skill set.” He’s focused on the online rollback netcode, and has no direct reports on the team. Seelye also used the word genius to describe his work on the netcode and called it an “amazing technical feat,” but said that she’d been clear during the hiring process that she “was not willing to trade bad behavior for genius.” 

“This is not a scenario where he’s difficult to work with and making people on the team mad, and we’re saying ‘oh it’s okay because he’s so amazing at what he does.’ No assholes. Just a straight, no assholes policy,” she said. “So I don’t believe, today, that I am trading genius for bad behavior. I think that what we’re doing is, people have strengths and weaknesses, and they have the ability to do really good work and they have the ability to not do great work if they’re in a bad situation.”

Diesel Legacy art director Giancarlo Montalbano also praised Zaimont when I reached out to him privately. “We couldn’t have done what we’ve done on Diesel Legacy if there wasn’t a great working relationship, in my opinion,” he said over email. “This team has been creatively firing on all cylinders from day one, and that has to do with conduct as much as it does proficiency. This kind of game is notoriously complex in its execution, requiring an almost perfect handshake between design and art/animation production. ANY poor relationships or conduct on the team would be detrimental to what we are trying to do here. Mike consistently outpaces almost everyone on the team in his general levity and attentiveness to people’s creative needs. The entire team has successfully created strong, productive, and professional working relationships, in my observance. I will tell you that, in my career, this is some of the best team synergy I’ve ever experienced.”

One of the former Lab Zero developers I spoke with told me that they warned Modus Games that hiring Zaimont would be a red flag to other indie developers. Two others expressed that they hoped he had changed, and did think he had a right to make a living doing what he does best. “If he treats the other team members better than how he treated us, good on him, good on them,” said one.

The fourth former coworker strongly disagreed.

“When I heard that Modus were going to work with him, I was like: that is disgusting. They are disgusting. It’s disgusting they’d work with him because they clearly don’t care about female game developers—the public record was there of his continued harassment of two ex-coworkers.”

Seelye knew that in announcing Diesel Legacy, the studio would be under scrutiny for Zaimont’s involvement, and went back and forth on how to address it. Ultimately, she said, they decided to “lead with the truth and hope that works.”

“I’m not sure it’s appropriate to say who has changed and who hasn’t changed,” said Seelye. “I can only talk about my experience with him, and the team’s experience with him. There’s a team of 30 people who have all been working together for the past couple years, and those guys have worked very effectively together. We have not seen any of the behavior that caused a lot of the problems that he had previously in his career. Has he changed? Has he not changed? I don’t know. And I don’t know if you can say that about somebody else.

“But what I can say is the behavior that everyone is experiencing with him is fundamentally different, phenomenally different, than what was happening. By his own admission—he would say he’s completely changed how he deals with issues, how he deals with pressure, his team member interaction. By his own admission, and by me seeing it.”

Zaimont has remained out of the public spotlight since 2020, and the lawsuit over the fate of Lab Zero continues to crawl through the legal system, with a hearing scheduled for August. The outcome may eventually provide some closure for the the three people directly involved, but it can’t answer the question of how the games industry deals with preventing abuse, and reckoning with who gets forgiveness.

The studio’s ambition is aided by extremely solid foundations. If you’ve played its last two games—you really should—you’ll recognise the core features. You’ll guide your team of ne’er do wells through maps teeming with enemies, obstacles and opportunities for mayhem, employing their specialist skills to distract, manipulate and murder. Enemies are alert to noises, footprints and feature dynamic view cones that are affected by the time of day, obstacles and whether your skullduggerous pals are sneaking or not.

Each mission is an elaborate puzzle with multiple solutions, rewarding creativity and risk-taking. Shadow Gambit adds to this wonderful recipe with heaps and heaps of magic, which will both help and hinder you. 

Jumping into the start of the first act, I only have control over Afia, the soon-to-be leader of the crew. Even with just a single pirate, Shadow Gambit is a lot of fun. As well as having a dagger and pistol, Afia wields a magical sword that’s embedded in her chest, which allows her to blink to an enemy location and swiftly murder them. This isn’t just a tool for murder; it’s a convenient way to get to out-of-reach places. She can also freeze an enemy for a few seconds. I’m reminded of Dishonored (not for the first time in a Mimimi game), but not just because of the existence of the blink ability. They’re both stealth games that nonetheless love a bit of flashiness, recognising that being sneaky doesn’t mean being boring and just going around snapping necks. 

I leave a trail of corpses behind me (some of them stuffed in bushes or thrown off cliffs) and eventually liberate The Red Marley, the aforementioned sentient ship. From here, I can sail to new locations once they are unlocked and put together a proper pirate crew using soul magic and black pearls to create undead pals. 

Come sail away

The Red Marley also serves an important function mid-mission, allowing you to pause and speed up time, or create memories that allow you to travel back in time should you screw up—which you inevitably will. Save scumming has always been an important part of these games, encouraging you to experiment and make mistakes. But here it’s turned into a proper feature, with your friendly ship even suggesting times to lock in a new memory. Thanks, buddy! 

For my second crewmate, I have two choices: the ship’s cook and the ship’s medic. Though distinct characters with unique abilities, they are both able to manipulate enemies. The medic can get enemies to follow her, while the cook uses a bird whistle to attract them to a specific location. This kind of ability is essential because a big part of Shadow Gambit, and all of Mimimi’s games, is breaking enemy patterns and drawing out guards. I go with the cook because I care about food more than my health. He’s got another handy ability, too. He can toss a paper doll onto the floor, and when an enemy walks into its radius, he can teleport right to them and slice them up with his sword. He can also stick the doll to an enemy, which is great when you need to take out a patrolling guard at a specific point on their route. 

To get to grips with new crewmates, you can complete tutorial missions conjured up by The Red Marley, teaching you how to use their two special abilities, and then setting you up with a challenge. All of these are optional, but having the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of a new character before the next proper mission is a very welcome feature.

With multiple characters in tow, things really start opening up, allowing you to tackle missions from multiple angles or synergise attacks and abilities. This is aided by the return of Shadow Mode, which pauses the game and lets you line up actions with different members of your crew and then execute them all at once. This has lots of utility, but is especially handy when taking out enemies connected by a magical thread, which brings them back to life unless all of them are killed at the same time. 

In a later mission, I add the ship’s ghostly quartermaster to the roster. His magical trick is possessing enemies, gaining new abilities depending on the type of enemy he’s possessed. This allows him to saunter around hostile areas unmolested, create distractions, and get close to other enemies to take them out. This proves to be extremely helpful when we’re sneaking through a large island filled with multiple compounds bursting with guards and patrols and locked doors. 

Since you’re free to pick what crewmates to revive first (there are eight in total), and which to bring along on missions, the maps are designed for a lot of different approaches. In one mission, I split up the group to assassinate two enemies situated on either end of a bridge, and at first it seems like I’ve made a mistake. The obstacles I encounter on one side initially seem like they would have been better handled by someone I’ve sent to the other side. But through careful timing and some trial and error, I manage to muddle my way through it—only to discover another less obvious route that would have allowed me to keep my squad together. There’s a good lesson here: always be rotating that camera. 

Amphibious assault

You can even select where to enter missions. Some maps have multiple locations where a boat can dock, and you can unlock mystical doorways that create new places to enter and exit islands. Since islands contain multiple missions, the best place to arrive is going to be determined by your objectives, but also who you’ve brought along with you. Not every character can swim or climb, which will have an impact on the route you take through the map. And there are more subtle differences, too. Afia, for instance, takes quite a while to pull off her basic attack, leaving her open to being spotted. If you’ve only got a brief window, then you’ll want a more swift murderer.       

Conveniently, selecting a mission from the map menu gives you a bunch of information: how long the mission will take, the time of day and how much vigour you’ll gain. The latter is related to an upgrade system that I didn’t have a chance to play around with. Essentially, every character’s magical ability can be enhanced. So Afia’s blink, for example, can have its range extended. 

The preview build let me play through the first act and conjured up plenty of engaging stealth conundrums, but it’s only whet my appetite for more. The fantastical elements prove to be a real boon, letting you access lots of creative solutions, as well as giving the art style and environments a more playful vibe. Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3 were handsome games, but ghost ships, cursed islands and lush paradises make this cruise especially striking. 

You’ll be able to take Shadow Gambit for a spin yourself from June 19, as it will be part of Steam Next Fest. And it’s not long until the full launch on August 17. 

Batterystaple Games’ 30XX, a sequel to 2017’s 20XX, puts you into the clanking metal shoes of android duo Ace and Nina, who awaken after a thousand-year slumber to platform through a fragile world and whoop any robot that gets in their way.

The new trailer shows how 30XX is playable solo or with a friend in local or online co-op. 30XX also lets you tackle the adventure in two distinct modes, depending on your preferred playstyle. In Roguelite Mode, the game comprises randomly generated levels and features punishing permadeath. But in Mega Mode, levels remain the same and there are save points to track your progress—perfect if you’re looking for that nostalgic Mega Man boss rush experience. 

In both modes, you can tailor the 30XX’s difficulty to offer you just the right amount of challenge. Hopefully, that should stop searching for upgrades, fusing powers, and marveling at the stylish spritework being interrupted with too many frustrating deaths.

And once you’re done unlocking all of 30XX’s NieR Automata-inspired secret endings, you can jump into a level editor in Maker Mode to explore custom campaigns created by other players… or build deadly dioramas to test the mettle of strangers. 

30XX is coming to PC via Steam on August 9, so drop it on your wishlist if the trailer has given you an appetite for a robot rampage. Or if you just can’t wait, you can always pick it up in early access and check out the existing build ahead of its full-service launch later this year.