The closure was first reported by Polish gaming site CD Action, which quoted a former employee as saying the studio had been shuttered at the end of June after Embracer was unable to find a buyer. 

Shortly after that report came to light, former creative director Bjorn Pankratz, along with his wife and fellow Piranha Bytes veteran Jennifer, announced the launch of a new indie outfit called Pithead Studio. 

"We wanted to keep doing what we love," Pankratz said in the studio announcement video. "This seemed like the best way to do it."

The video makes no mention of Piranha Bytes, but a message posted on the Pithead Studio Discord points to an unhappy ending. 

"As you sure noticed, the gaming industry was not doing well last year," it states. "This was also the case for the Embracer Group, to which THQ Nordic and Piranha Bytes belong. A lot of studios had to close, thousands of people in the gaming industry worldwide lost their jobs. Sadly, Piranha Bytes was also affected by this."

A separate message notes that the Gothic, Risen, and Elex games remain the property of THQ Nordic, the Embracer brand under which Piranha Bytes operated, and Pithead Studio has no knowledge of, or influence over, what will happen to them in the future.

"All we know is that Alkimia Interactive from Spain is working on an Elex remake," Pithead said. "We are not included in the making of the remake in any form, and therefore have no influence on it. Therefore, we are as excited as you are and will follow it with curiosity."

Piranha Bytes wasn't a "big" studio but it did have deep roots in PC gaming. Founded in 1997, its first game was the 2001 fantasy RPG Gothic, and while it wasn't a huge hit, it established Piranha Bytes as a maker of ambitious Eurojank—the sort of games that tend to have small but very dedicated followings. That reputation was cemented over the years by two more Gothic RPGs, the Risen RPG trilogy, and two Elex games: The first Elex, for instance, "is the kind of weird, flawed RPG we don’t always get anymore," we wrote in our 2017 review, the kind of thing that "will appeal to die-hard RPG fans and few others." 

Embracer-owned THQ Nordic acquired Piranha Bytes in 2019, when Embracer's 'buy everything that isn't nailed down' spree was getting up to full speed, but it fell victim to the collapse of a $2 billion investment deal that resulted in hundreds of layoffs through 2023 and '24, and the closure of other studios including Volition, Free Radical, and Pieces Interactive.

A message posted on the Piranha Bytes website in January saying the studio was trying to find a partner for its new project has been removed. Via the Wayback Machine, that message was present as recently as June 2—all that remains now is the studio logo and contact information.

THQ Nordic declined to comment on the reported closure.

And I couldn't resist including 20 more similarly themed alternatives because there have been a mind-boggling number of cool indie games released this year.

While I bend the rules a bit sometimes, most games here are:

• Launched, graduated from early access or otherwise ‘completed’ in 2024
• Something I’ve personally played and can vouch for the worthiness of
• Genuine underdogs—most below 500 user reviews, some near-total unknowns
• Quirky, distinctive, offbeat and under-covered—we like those deep cuts
• At least 20% discounted—I am nominally trying to SAVE you some money
• As broad a range of genres as possible. Hence the alternative mentions!

As always, I hope you discover something new, funky and fun to love here. Let’s get started! 

Frogmonster - FPS/metroidvania 

Price: $14.99 / £12.56 (25% off) | Developer: Ben Jungwirth

The swampy mutant spawn of Metroid Prime and Hollow Knight, with all the frogs you can eat. And be. You’re a frog with a gun, brought into existence by a weird bird god. There are some problems that need to be solved by shooting them with guns. And jumping around. And eating bugs. Hence the frog part. In short: Kermit murder with an assortment of upgradeable guns and magic spells that also double as emergency healing.

This one hits different with a funky voxel aesthetic and strange soundscape of noodly music and mouth-sound effects. But once you’re acclimated to the swamp-water you’ll find a dense Metroidy world with some fun navigation powers, Hollow Knight’s customizable upgrade system and dozens of good boss fights in a genre where you’re lucky to get one per game. Even in the early game, there’s a great mix of boss designs, attack patterns and Souls-ish phase changes. It’s a lot to chew on, and the developer keeps adding post-game challenge bosses and new content.

Alternatively: Bears in Space (20% off) is Jazzpunk meets Ratchet & Clank. No Metroidy stuff here, but plenty to explore—it’s part bullet-hellish FPS, part screwball gag delivery system. Funny most of the time (more than most TV comedy shows can claim) and a solid shooter for all of it. 

Angel At Dusk - Vertical scrolling shmup 

Price: $10.49 / £8.95 (30% off) | Developer: Akiragoya

Be not afraid of these biblically inaccurate angels, because despite the terrifying clawed monster-women tearing each other’s guts out in a bullet hell fleshpocalypse, the game is surprisingly accessible to newcomers. Angel At Dusk starts on a gentle introductory run with ample tutorializing, and the core mechanics are simple, rewarding aggression and close-range shooting with extra health and smart bombs, plus you’ve got a secondary attack to stall or even delete incoming attacks. 

Angel At Dusk does a whole lot beyond the standard half-hour long arcade mode, though. Most of my time has gone into the massive branching story mode with RPG elements, where you can upgrade your freaky bio-ships, collect weapons and slowly unfurl a (surprisingly compelling) high-concept sci-fi story explaining why the world is made of meat, bone and screaming faces, and why all these ‘angels’ are murdering the hell out of each other. Plus, it’s just metal as hell.

Alternatively: Devil Blade Reboot (15% off) is a much more traditional short n’ sweet (and similarly aggressive) spaceship shmup by one of Vanillaware’s founding artists. As such, it is absolutely SPECTACULAR to look at. What’ll it be? Angels or devils? 

Nidus - Twin-stick shooter(?) 

Price: $5.39 / £5.01 (40% off) | Developer: Caleb Wood

Were it not for the total lack of fluffy ungulates, this could pass for a Jeff Minter joint. A psychedelic bizarro arena shooter where you play as a symbiotically paired cosmic flower and the angry wasp defending it. Either controlling both at once or splitting roles in co-op, the fragile flower evades and debuffs enemies, while the invincible wasp eats bullets and rams targets, returning to the flower to recharge and deposit power, allowing the flower to fire big bullet-wave attacks. It’s like rubbing your tummy and patting your head in the middle of a firefight, on shrooms.

Nidus is an uncompromising short-and-focused arcade experience with online leaderboards, but at least there’s an easy mode to ensure that most players will be able to fight through all the (gorgeously and procedurally animated) alien fauna to see the end. But the real bragging rights lie in completing it on Normal or even higher settings.

Alternatively: Windowkill (25% off) is more normal mechanically, but almost as weird conceptually as it takes over your desktop with malicious windows that can be rescaled with bullets, moved around as benevolent safe-spots or contain malicious boss popups that need to be closed. 

Dark Envoy - Tactical RPG 

Price: $19.49 / £16.24 (35% off) | Developer: Event Horizon

Successor to the oddball dungeon crawl RPG Tower Of Time, Dark Envoy is more of those slow-mo, cooldown-based squad tactics. Set in a fun science-fantasy world (so you’ve got laser rifles and elven summoning magic), story takes a backseat to crunchy combat with a very customizable party. There’s some moral decisions to be made along the way too, but don’t expect Witcher-scale repercussions.

With few restrictions beyond cooldowns, it wants you to use every character’s full set of abilities all the time, as fights can be long and tough, especially on higher difficulties. In boss fights it can feel a lot like an MMO raid, but you’re controlling the whole party all at once, dodging attack patterns and looking for openings. Dark Envoy was pretty rough at launch in 2023, but gets into this list because of a major ‘Director’s Cut’ re-release this year. Not quite an early access graduation, but close enough.

Alternatively: Kingsvein (20% off) is another party-building tactical RPG set in a world of living stone, but this time turn-based and with mechanics heavily inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics. Successor to the excellent age-of-sail RPG sandbox Horizon’s Gate. 

Berserk Boy - Mega Man-like platformer 

Price: $14.99 / £11.19 (30% off) | Developer: Berserk Boy Games

Cribbing from the Mega Man Zero series and the more recent Azure Striker Gunvolt games (including its tag-and-zap combat flow), Berserk Boy is more linear than your average Mega Man, but still has that familiar mix of wall-grabbing, robot-smashing and collecting new weapons and moves. It just feels good to run around, air-dash and bounce off enemies’ heads, and while the aesthetics sometimes feel a bit like Game Boy Advance-era also-ran, the soundtrack is a banger start to finish.

While Berserk Boy’s main campaign is mostly linear, acquiring new powers later in the game allows you to explore previously locked areas, providing replay value, rewards and unlocking bonus levels. Lots of bonus levels. One per regular level of the game, even. It’s not a huge game, but 100%ing this one feels satisfying.

You can also get Berserk Boy even cheaper if you own my personal platformer pick of 2023, Gravity Circuit, another heavily inspired by Mega Man Zero.

Alternatively: Bat Boy (40% off) is a few months older, shares a similar title, a similar melee-heavy Mega Man-like design and a similarly great soundtrack. Where it differs is a more NES-like aesthetic. 

Ultros - Metroidvania 

Price: $14.99 / £12.74 (25% off) | Developer: Hadoque

If Nidus hasn’t sated your hunger for cosmic psychedelia, Ultros should. An overwhelmingly colourful hand-drawn metroidvania that looks like it’s straight from the pages of a particularly intense Franco-Belgian comic. A surreal, squishy and fleshy sci-fi setting where you’re a mysterious masked hunter trying to break free of a time loop aboard a lush and overgrown space palace.

Mechanically, what sets Ultros apart is its story structure, taking part over multiple time loops (although you bring back much of your knowledge and gear each time) and its focus on food. You can collect seeds to grow into harvestable plants at planting spots around the map, but also carve meat from enemies. A variety of melee moves, perfect parries and backstabs will provide cleaner cuts of meat that provide more upgrade points when consumed. Messy fighting will just give you a handful of bloody scraps that’ll keep you fed and alive, but won’t confer much progress.

Alternatively: Venture To The Vile (20% off) is another stab-happy metroidvania, this one trading cosmic weirdness for a Victorian stiff upper lip. Still strange, though, as it’s set in a (surprisingly open) world of mad science, fungal curse-blooms and animal masks being mandatory at all times. 

Withering Rooms - Survival horror roguelike 

Price: $18.74/£14.99 (25% off) | Developer: Moonless Formless

A recent early access graduate, Withering Rooms is an interesting mash-up of side-scrolling survival horror and roguelike. Looking and feeling a bit like SNES classic Clock Tower mashed up with a modern Resident Evil, you play as a young woman in a Victorian mental institution. Or at least the shared dream-realm attached to it. Depending on which member of staff (or patient) you talk to, this is either very therapeutic or something to be escaped ASAP.

Until you’ve got a good build and some gear going, combat is slow and dangerous and dying reshuffles the map. Thankfully opportunities to create permanent inventory items are frequent, letting you carry more progression forward with you each time. One particularly fun aspect is the magic system. Spells are powerful, but using them curses you a little bit at a time. At high curse levels, the world gets even weirder and more unpredictable. Mostly bad, but good stuff can be found, methodically, in the madness.

Alternatively: The Tower On The Borderland (20% off) is less roguelike, more metroid, but still an offbeat take on the survival horror genre, with a stark Killer 7-ish aesthetic and a hazily told story of a young soldier fighting her way out of a cursed tower also linked to the realm of dreams. 

Sonar Shock - Immersive sim 

Price: $6.39 / £5.59 (20% off) | Developer: Raphael Bossniak

A tribute to the original DOS System Shock, but not without losing its own identity, Sonar Shock is a light and lo-fi immersive sim set aboard a haunted Soviet mega-sub. When the radiation and maddened/drunk crewmen aren’t trying to murder you, there’s an assortment of psychic lovecraftian beasties and even some critters from Eastern European folklore to contend with. Rather than having modern FPS controls, you move fully using the keyboard and aim using a floating mouse cursor, giving this one a very old-school feel. 

Less old school is the weirdly satisfying reloading system, where you click and drag parts of your gun on the UI to reload; pump that shotgun by clicking and dragging the slide. Despite the retro styling, Sonar Shock offers a lot of crunchy im-sim character building options and playstyles available. Given that the game is relatively short, it feels well built for replayability, with new stuff and routes likely to reveal themselves on return trips.

Alternatively: Freakhunter (50% off) is not an immersive sim, but another quirky FPS with a floating crosshair too. This one feels like a long-lost PS1 maze game, moving around like it’s a grid-based dungeon crawl, but combat is frantic button-mashing as enemies close distance. 

Path Of Achra - Pseudo-retro roguelike 

Price: $7.99 / £6.8 (20% off) | Developer: Ulfsire

Don’t be fooled by the DOS-era pixel art. Path of Achra is a very modern roguelike, designed to capture the feel of those absurd Binding Of Isaac runs where all your item synergies kick in and the entire universe explodes around you. Set in a world of primordial barbarian fantasy, you build your character from a culture, class and religion (more unlocking almost every run) and then fight through a branching map of single-screen battles, picking new abilities and gear along the way.

It’s shockingly compelling fun. Fast to learn the basics, and within a couple runs I had a character that could clear whole dungeons without moving—just passively summoning allies psychically blasting anything that came near. And if you lose a character to an unlucky roll of the dice, you can dust off that save and try to have them fight their way out of the underworld, if their build was tough enough.

Alternatively: The Land Beneath Us (20% off) is another turn-based dungeon crawler, this one much prettier, and with the gimmick of equipping one weapon per movement direction, making for very positional combat. Has a funky (and silly) sci-fi take on Welsh mythology, too, as you delve through the realms of Annwn. 

The Hayseed Knight - Visual novel 

Price: $15.99 / £13.40 (20% off) | Developer: Maxi Molina

Over seven years in the works and finally finished this year, The Hayseed Knight is an astonishingly polished and well-produced visual novel with a full professional voice cast, some gorgeous art and more animation than you’d expect from the genre. It’s a fantasy story (with the occasional choice and branch to be explored) about a one-eyed country bumpkin and his dream to become a knight in a furry fantasy city.

Misadventures, wacky hijinks and even some queer and unusually structured romance are on the cards, but it’s primarily a story of found family. The Hayseed Knight also frequently goes off on tangents that the simple premise might not have you prepared for. That, and the occasional trip through the fourth wall to remind us that you should support artists, but piracy is morally fine if it’s a rich corporation (or jerk) you’re screwing over.

Alternatively: The Mildew Children (25% off) is a darker, grimier and significantly less furry narrative adventure, this time about a mediaeval village populated by children and supported by grim pagan rituals. Witchcraft is risky, bloody business, and there’s a lot of tempting [LIE] dialogue options as conversations turn uncomfortable. 

Timemelters - Action-RTS tower defense 

Price: $11.99 / £10.05 (40% off) | Developer: Autoexec Games

Even more witchcraft, this time in third-person action-RTS form. Timemelters recently left early access and is a very refreshing third-person action twist on tower defence, playing a bit like a fusion of oddball strategy gem Sacrifice and the developer’s previous (and now free) Sang-Froid: Tale Of Werewolves. Both of those are pretty deep cuts, so maybe just try the demo? It’s good.

Most missions in Timemelters have you wizarding around, trying to intercept an army of demons before they can harm townsfolk or other objectives. But you’re under-staffed. Every time you die, you loop back in time, with your previous iteration carrying out all the actions they did previously. Sync up with yourself/selves and keep animating trees, summoning spikes or just throwing fireballs until you win. Timemelters also features full online co-op, and only one player needs to own the game thanks to its Friend Pass system.

Alternatively: Sentry (10% off) offers only a small discount, but that's on top of a lower early access price. Essentially Orcs Must Die in space with a persistent roguelike campaign structure. You can’t defend every location, so pick carefully which parts of the ship you can afford to lose to invaders. 

Astrolancer - Free-roaming/vertical shmup hybrid 

Price: $4.79 / £3.99 (20% off) | Developer: Studio Hexeye

A fantastic tribute to old NES classic The Guardian Legend, Astrolancer is half overhead run-and-gun shooter, half vertically scrolling shmup, all good. As a transforming android sent in to clear up a Von Neumann Probe infestation, you spend half the game exploring buildings for upgrades, chatting with the local worker bots, and then hunting down the region’s boss. Challenging, but slower-paced. Once a boss is on the ropes, you turn into a spaceship and chase it through a vertical shmup stage. Not quite bullet hell, but pretty demanding, and an exciting shift in gears.

Clocking in at seven levels each with ground and air segments, Astrolancer isn’t a massive game, but it is a replayable one, with cleverly balanced higher difficulties (including a challenge mode that remixes a lot) giving it some extra life. Don’t miss out on the in-game manual too—a virtual NES booklet that you can flip through, notes pages at the back and all.

Alternatively: Go Mecha Ball (50% off) is another short-but-sweet arcade game about transforming mecha! I wrote about it earlier in the year, and loved it then. My one real gripe—its lack of a more structured score-chasing mode—has since been addressed. 

Ereban: Shadow Legacy - Stealth action 

Price: $18.74 / £15.74 (25% off) | Developer: Baby Robot Games

Turns out that Nintendo's Splatoon has a whole lot of good ideas that take on new life in other genres. Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a sci-fi stealth ‘em up where you play as a mystical space ninja that can turn into a blob of living darkness whenever you’re standing in shadow. While you’re in blob form you’re invincible, invisible, and able to slide up and stick to even vertical surfaces. Perfect for getting the drop on the many robot guards patrolling each map.

There’s the usual option to play the game stabby or pacifist, with multiple endings and power sets available depending on how you want to play. Ereban also recently received a big update adding easy and hard modes, for those who found the default unsatisfying. Easy mode removes death by falling and hard makes it so stamina only refills in the shadows and enemies are more perceptive. Good for a second run.

Alternatively: Raw Metal (20% off) is more shadowy sci-fi sneakytimes, but this one’s been taking notes from Sifu instead of Splatoon. When Metal Gear-ish infiltration fails, improv-heavy martial arts is the answer to life’s problems. And when that fails, try again—it’s a roguelite too. 

Saviorless - 2D platformer 

Price: $9.09 / £8.39 (30% off) | Developer: Empty Head Games

While every country (no matter how small and remote) has a game development scene, gory gothic adventure platformer Saviorless has proudly proclaimed itself as Cuba’s first major indie game. A bold statement for a visually bold game. It’s a sharply illustrated 2D platformer with a focus on narrative and atmosphere, plus a couple of interesting mechanical twists.

The game is presented as a familiar story retold through rival narrators, each of which has their own protagonist to control. Antar, a fragile kid with no combat abilities whatsoever (and a powerful alter-ego known as The Savior), and Nento, a horse-headed demon that pummels stuff that would otherwise one-shot his smaller counterpart. Not an easy one: PCG’s Joshua Wolens criticised its stingy checkpoint placement, despite enjoying its vibes otherwise.

Alternatively: Anomaly Agent (40% off) is a hit in its native Turkey but lesser known elsewhere. It’s a scrappy sci-fi platform brawler about an agency that tracks down and neutralises reality-bending anomalies. Its oddly loose spritework belies a smart combat engine, with a lot of room for parries, dodge rolls and combos using anything you can grab. While linear, it was recently updated with a roguelike dungeon mode, remixing all the game’s encounters. 

Decimate Drive - First-person experimental horror 

Price: $5.99 / £5.01 (25% off) | Developer: Some Random Designing

Decimate Drive feels like an actual nightmare. Not especially coherent, but the kind of thing that has you bolting upright at 4 am in a cold sweat and politely asking your brain ‘What the hell?’. Your goal is to answer phones, ringing out in abandoned parking lots and industrial parks at night, while seemingly driverless (Tesla?) cars attempt to run you over, sliding and skidding on snow and ice. It’s genuinely nerve-wracking, as you constantly look around for trees and bollards that you might be able to lure a car into, stalling it briefly and giving you a chance to change direction. 

Each car has its own AI, handling and personality—some are more bloodthirsty than others, giving it some interesting wrinkles. The solo developer reckons they can get a little more mileage out of its murderous motors too, recently updating with a new endless score attack mode. A second update is also planned, featuring more story and some additional cars.

Alternatively: Flathead is the only game not discounted here, but gets a mention because it’s only $2 and another nightmarish experiment in dreamlike horror filled with limited control and unsettling machines in the dark. Good horror vibes can make something as simple as basic over/under betting into a fresh hell. 

Against Great Darkness - Brick breaker roguelike 

Price: $5.59 / £4.79 (20% off) | Developer: Hitreg Studios

Breakout and biblical apocrypha? A match made in bullet hell. Mix in some roguelite progression and you’ve got a quite bizarre mash-up of genres and themes, but it somehow works. Dodging enemy bullets is as important here as hitting the ball back. Moreso, even—there’s little penalty for dropping your shots, aside from losing some damage output. Every couple seconds, your chosen pagan (trying to ascend to heaven, of course) spits out an additional ball to bounce around, and you can have as many of them in play as you can handle, after a few upgrades.

This one leans a lot more towards the twitchy arcade side of things. A good build of items and perks will give you an edge, but dodging and knowing when to fire off a bullet-clearing bomb are arguably more important skills. A weirdly refreshing take on Breakout, all told.

Alternatively: Tiny Breakers Camp (15% off) is proof that concepts come in waves. Two brick breaker roguelikes within a month of each other? Tiny Breakers Camp is a slower, cuter, more strategic take on the concept. Keep that ball in play and summon lots of little pixel buddies to clear each map. Both (plus one other, Whackerball) can be picked up at an even steeper discount in this bundle on Steam. 

Robobeat - Rhythm FPS 

Price: $15.99 / £13.59 (20% off) | Developer: Simon Fredholm

A stylish and exceptionally technical rhythm FPS in the vein of Metal: Hellsinger or BPM. Just shooting to the beat isn’t enough. There’s schmoovement here, dashes and slides and double-jumps, plus a complex combo system where you can buff your weapons by parrying and reloading in specific on-the-beat patterns, depending on which weapon it is. It’s a lot!

There’s some roguelite stuff too, complete with a mysterious story revealed bit by bit. Real impressive for a fresh early access debut, and there’s more to come yet. Interestingly, you can switch what music is playing at any point to change the game’s beats per minute if you want an easier or harder beat to follow. Or you can just import your own music, assuming it’s rhythmic.

Alternatively: Beat Slayer (30% off) was released just a month before Robobeat, and is another action roguelike about rhythmically rumbling with robots, this one set in alt-universe post-wall Berlin. This one’s got an isometric perspective and more focus on crowd control over accuracy, and some Hades-inspired progression. The less intense of the two. 

Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons - Co-op exploration platformer 

Price: $7.99 / £6.80 (20% off) | Developer: Unepic Games

Pampas & Selene is a great big cozy lo-fi tribute to The Maze of Galious, the 1987 MSX game that inspired La-Mulana and many more. Despite some modern effects (like widescreen support) it feels authentically retro, even offering an alternative FM synth soundtrack if you want to get really ‘80s. There’s plenty to chew on thanks to a big map to explore, two characters (Pampas the close-combat knight and Selene, the ranged witch) to tag-team between, and even some sidequests assigned to you by the greek gods.

While you can play the game solo, it’s far more interesting to play with a friend, either splitscreen or online. As well as further contrasting their separate abilities, the two heroes can explore different rooms separately, with a little picture-in-picture window if playing online so you can track where your buddy is at. But the two work best together, with Selene able to cast from behind Pampas’ shield. Great for building trust. Or breaking it.

Alternatively: Surmount: A Mountain Climbing Adventure (33% off) is a more arcadey and physics-driven way of ruining friendships, but this mountaineering game were you spin and fling yourself between handholds still has plenty of potential for trust to be betrayed if you play (optionally) in co-op. 

Break The Loop - Darkest Dungeon-like 

Price: $9.74 / £8.31 (35% off) | Developer: Mastodonte

Darkest Dungeon minus the darkness? Break The Loop takes the combat of the popular despair simulator and wraps it in a bouncy, silly cartoon adventure. Your team of time-travelling weirdos need to stop three separate apocalypses, starting with an eldritch tentacle-beasts and getting weirder from there. 

Rather than blindly exploring dungeons, you get to (partially) pick which encounters happen along the timeline, selecting when you’ll get to rest, fight or pick bonuses, so you’ve only got yourself to blame when you place an Elite enemy before a rest stop. While it’s brighter and cuter than Darkest Dungeon, it’s still pretty tough. Expect to get flattened at first, but each run gives you a steady assortment of unlocks and permanent buffs, bringing victory just that tiny bit closer.

You can also get Break The Loop even cheaper if you own the similarly gorgeous (and French) Aetheris, previously featured in this very roundup series.

Alternatively: Anomaly Collapse (10% off) is only slightly discounted, but an even more robust (and brighter) take on Darkest Dungeon’s formula. Eldritch hellbeasts abound again, this time in a furry cyberpunk city. The combat is surprisingly mobile, with enemies attacking from both sides, and units able to stack up on each other at the cost of a debuff for overcrowding. 

Mech Engineer - Diegetic UI strategy hell 

Price: $11.99 / £9.11 (20% off) | Developer: KiberKreker

No game is ‘for everyone’, but Mech Engineer is specifically tuned for a small number of retro strategy freaks. A diegetic UI nightmare where you click buttons, flip switches and turn dials to manage mankind’s last holdout (a gigantic walking city) on a kaiju-infested Earth. You’re expected to do EVERYTHING, from assigning resources to city districts, to individually tuning mech reactors. The only thing you don’t do is piloting, as you’ve got to rely on AI pilots with their own personalities and thresholds for panic.

It’s a bit like an even more esoteric, DOS-styled take on Highfleet. My first attempt at the campaign ended almost immediately as I failed to hold off the ‘tutorial’ assault. A few more tries and I think I understand the basics, but this is a game of trial, error, and thumbing through the (virtual) paper manual, which can get buried under literal paperwork in-game. I like it. It hurts so good.

Alternatively: 9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far (25% off) is the opposite, if you’re not up for UI hell. Command & Conquer with the serial numbers filed off and developed by ex-Westwood crew Petroglyph, who have been producing almost nothing but variants on the formula for decades now. It’s safe, satisfying, cute and nostalgic. 

I sincerely hope this has opened some eyes to just how many weird, wonderful and wacky games are dropping on Steam every week. This is just my sales shortlist from the past six months. If you’re after even steeper discounts, check out my previous deep sales dives, most of which are on sale again, and going even cheaper this year. 

• Winter 2024 (20 games) 
• Summer 2023 (20 games) 
• Spring 2023 (15 games) 
• Winter 2022 (15 games) 
• Summer 2022 (15 games) 
• Indie GOTY picks 2023 (6 games) 

To all the developers behind these games: Thank you for keeping things weird, and may you find success sufficient to keep doing what you love. And to everyone who’s bought something off one of these lists: You’re a big hipster nerd and that’s just great. Until next time!

In response to the fourth question in the investor call transcript, Furukawa said the following (obtained via machine translation and edited for clarity):

"In the game industry, AI-like technology has long been used to control enemy character movements, so I believe that game development and AI technology have always been closely related.

Generative AI, which has been a hot topic recently, can be more creative [in its use], but I also recognize that it has issues with intellectual property rights.

Our company has [had] the know-how to create optimal gaming experiences for our customers for decades.

While we are flexible in responding to technological developments, we would like to continue to deliver value that is unique to us and cannot be created simply by technology alone."

Despite legal, creative, and ethical concerns around generative AI tools that scrape the internet for image and text data to spit out a reconfigured, amalgamated form, the gold rush⁠—some might say bubble⁠—around the tech shows no signs of slowing down soon.

Google now inserts a little AI generated answer box above the search results you want that will sometimes tell you to drink pee or eat rocks⁠—you can effectively turn it off, by the way⁠—while Microsoft entered into a partnership with an AI dialogue company for games at the end of last year, and recently had to back down on implementing an AI "Recall" feature that would track all activity on certain new Windows PCs. Ubiquitous GPU manufacturer Nvidia, meanwhile, has become the most valuable company in the world on the back of its chips powering the most high-profile AI models.

That carnival atmosphere is what makes Furukawa's response so surprising and refreshing. The most you're usually allowed to say in the standard CEO script if you're circumspect about generative AI is that you're "looking into it" or "considering all options on the table." Furukawa's response is far more explicit, and Nintendo is the largest company in the games industry, if not the world, to adopt such a stance.

In many ways, though, this response feels perfectly, classically "Nintendo." As TweakTown points out, Nintendo is a supremely litigious company that jealously guards its intellectual property. Usually, this manifests in ways that are detrimental to fans and consumers: its legendary hostility to mods, fan art, and fan games, or its recently redoubled efforts to squash emulators and ROM hosting sites. But in this particular instance, with AI models drawing on vast hauls of data with little regard for ownership, the iron law of IP has guided company president Furukawa in a measured, farsighted direction.

To give Nintendo a little more credit, it's also a move that lines up with the company's creative history: Nintendo sets trends instead of following them. On the tech side, Nintendo habitually uses lower-power, older hardware to push new experiences no one else thought of: inventing handheld gaming as we know it with the Game Boy then reinventing it with the Switch, or inspiring a generation of lesser motion control imitators with the Wii. Sleepwalking into AI hype doesn't line up with that history⁠—but then again, neither did sleepwalking into NFTs, however perfunctory it may have been.

So maybe we should have seen this coming from Nintendo, but I still find it comforting and reassuring amid the ongoing wave of AI fabulism, even as many of Nintendo's other high-level decisions in recent years have left me frustrated with the company.

SGDQ issued a warning in advance that access to this particular run would be restricted once it began to ensure "the most comfortable environment," which makes a lot more sense when you realize the speedrunner in question is, in fact, the shiba inu who previously completed a Gyromite run at Awesome Games Done Quick in January. The puppy is not unprecedented.

Can a dog play baseball? I can only assume that someone checked into it and determined there ain't no rule says he can't. But he does require a little help: Peanut Butter uses a modified controller for the job, which is basically a big button (done up like a baseball, naturally) that PB bops as guided by speedrunning partner JSR_. So it's not conventional gameplay in the strictest sense, but on the other hand Peanut Butter does not have thumbs or an evolved prefrontal cortex. I'd call it a fair balance, all in all.

You will probably not be surprised to hear that the house was packed:

The doggo went down by one in the early innings of the game but, despite a baserunning error that cost an out, managed to manufacture a couple runs in the sixth to take the lead.

But it wasn't over: Minnesota came back to tie the game and send it into extra innings, tied at three-all. Finally, in the bottom of the 12th, Peanut Butter hit a rope down the right-field line to set up the winning run with one out. But small ball to get the runner over was not the plan: With the next batter—none other than Griffey Jr. himself—Peanut Butter hit a monster shot over the left field wall to bring in two, winning the game 5-3 and completing the run.

The crowd, needless to say, went wild.

The time of 29:48 was well behind Peanut Butter's previous mark of 21:22, set in January. Even so, everyone agreed the very good boy was the hero of the day. "I am so proud of this dog, man," JSR_ tweeted after the run was finished. "This is the greatest moment of both of our lives. What a doggo."

Peanut Butter even got to sign the wall.

This is obviously a highlight, but it's not the only big thing to happen at this year's SGDQ: Games Done Quick also announced yesterday that it has now surpassed $50 million raised for charity by GDQ events. And there's still lots to see in this one: Summer Games Done runs until July 7 and has upcoming speedruns of games including Metal Gear Solid 4, Levelhead, Baldur's Gate 3, and Elden Ring.

You can watch Peanut Butter's full SGDQ 2024 speedrun below:

The announcement didn't provide much clarity. "Heads up, SGDQ2024 Attendees!" Games Done Quick tweeted. "We'll be closing our stream room doors at the start of tonight's 'Ken Griffey Jr. - Win a Game' run by @JSR2gamers & PB, and will NOT allow further entry until the run has ended. Please plan ahead if you intend to watch in-person. Thank you!

"This decision is to provide the most comfortable environment for PB in a live environment. Our staff will address the audience in the room prior to the run's start about what to expect and follow."

"Who is this PB guy?" I wondered. "Why do they deserve this kind of special consideration?" My brain slowly ticked over, to no avail; finally, at a loss, I went to Google—and suddenly it all came back.

PB is Peanut Butter, and Peanut Butter is a dog—specifically, a Shiba Inu who not only appeared at Awesome Games Done Quick in January but actually set a record for speedrunning the 1985 NES platformer Gyromite. And if you don't believe me, head over to speedrun.com and check the books.

Peanut Butter works in partnership with speedrunner and streamer JSR, who guides PB through the runs—although as we noted when the Gyromite record was set, "credit really does belong to his very good boy for pressing the right buttons exactly when needed."

This won't be Peanut Butter's first crack at Griffey: He earned a place on the speedrun leaderboard for that game back in January. So yes, I now live in a world where a dog holds two more speedrunning records than I do.

Summer Games Done Quick is currently underway and set to run until July 7. Peanut Butter's speedrun attempt is scheduled to begin at 8:43 pm ET—if you can't be there to see it in person (and remember, show up early if you don't want to be stuck outside) you can watch the whole thing live on Twitch.

Hasselhoff is the face of a new campaign called Make Green Tuesday Moves (MGTM), a "videogames climate change alliance", which aims to offer unique DLC on the first Tuesday of every month using various celebrity endorsements. "MGTM will see proceeds from the sale of in-game items—which can comprise new and/or upcycled DLC goods such as characters, costumes and objects—invested into fully certified sustainability projects by not-for-profit digital platform PlanetPlay."

So: buy the DLC, donate to a good cause. The games involved are casual titles on the Google Play store called things like Bowling Club, Hunt Royale, Peridot and Tile Dynasty, which don't mean much to me but in terms of a global audience probably makes more sense than a crossover with Deep Rock Galactic: the games involved together boast over 36 million daily players. The full list of games and partners can be seen here.

The causes supported by the campaign include "the Hongera Project, which helps families in Kenya improve their living conditions by manufacturing and distributing clean cookstoves, and the WAI Wanaka water conservation project in New Zealand."

"As someone who has spent years entertaining audiences around the world, I know the power of influence," says David Hasselhoff. "Climate change isn't just a distant threat; it's here and now. By joining the Make Green Tuesday Moves initiative, we can turn our everyday gaming into a force for good. Let's make every play for our planet. Together, we can create a legacy of sustainability for future generations. Stay cool, stay green, and make a difference!"

This press release has also introduced me to the concept of "passive activism", surely an oxymoron, whereby you support a cause by basically not changing your behaviour but buying something.

This is a big campaign, with support from Google putting it front-and-center of the Play Store, and Google's Tamzin Taylor calls MGTM "a fantastic example of how the games industry can leverage its massive reach to make a positive impact." Rhea Loucas, CEO at PlanetPlay, says she hopes Hasselhoff's star power will "inspire millions of players to join our mission to help keep global warming below the 1.5 degree threshold."

You have to admire the gusto with which Hasselhoff throws himself into this stuff, even if he still thinks everyone's using joysticks. "Hey gamers, it's David Hasselhoff," says David Hasselhoff. "Your play time turns into green time, zapping pollution and healing the Earth one epic item at a time. So grab your joystick and hit play!"

If that's not enough… Hasselhoff also did a video in his old Knight Rider gear, and yes he's right next to KITT, and yes it ends with KITT agreeing you should all fight global warming. If that doesn't convince us to save the world, nothing will.

The Pixel Window is an in-development project from monoli, a Japanese material designer and art student-turned-engineering Ph.D. who blends those backgrounds to, as a Google translation of monoli's webshop puts it, create "a small laboratory you can wear." Monoli's made a series of wearable and handheld prisms, including color-diffracting cubes and the Pixel Mirror, which produces an inverted pixel image of what's behind it.

Following in the Pixel Mirror's footsteps, monoli has been teasing a successor since February, finally revealing the Pixel Window at the end of June. Compared to the Pixel Mirror, monoli's latest creation produces an uninverted pixelated image with cleaner, crisper edges. In monoli's words, it "minecrafts scenery without electricity."

I want one very badly—and not just because I want to see what my cat looks like pixelated without firing up some filters in Photoshop. Sure, I like some quality pixel art as much as the next guy, but at a younger age I'd considered trying to go into professional art. Instead, I chose the boundless financial bounty of writing for digital media and left art as a hobby, in part because I barely understand how color works and it makes me feel inadequate. But a tool like the Pixel Window has some real utility for artists, providing an immediate, readable distillation of a scene's hues and values. 

"Look at this thing. Look at those fat swatches. Details smashed. Incredibly legible values," said @Stretchedwiener, an artist with a deeply unfortunate Twitter handle. "Could be standard kit for any artist."

Monoli is still working on the Pixel Window, but is "aiming for" eventual sale. However, those of us outside of Japan will need to keep a close eye on Monoli's tweets, because international sales and shipping are only available during brief windows. Until then, I'll be here looking at all the world's smooth curves, like a chump. 

There's a lot I love about Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree—I'm right there nodding my head along to our 95% review—but the big one, the thing everything else flows from, is the fact that it's a full-on E X P A N S I O N. This is not DLC, a term that means basically nothing these days but mostly refers to smaller add-ons: a new character, a new set of weapons, maybe a nice six hour lil' bundle of quests and stuff. Shadow of the Erdtree is a proper '90s/'00s-ass PC game expansion. We're talking Command & Conquer Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge. We're talking Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith. We're talking StarCraft: Brood War. 

What treasures those were! Yuri's Revenge introduced a new campaign and a whole new faction to what's probably still my favorite RTS, adding the twist of mind control to Red Alert 2's wacky alternate history WW2. Look at this—40 minutes of filmed cutscenes for that campaign, which I pretty much ignored to play hours and hours of multiplayer. Speaking of multiplayer, what did Brood War have, like a 99% attach rate? Imagine playing StarCraft without Brood War post-1999—that's something you could basically only do by accident, it became so synonymous with the base game.

By getting all "back in my day" I don't mean to imply that expansions have died out. Thankfully Shadow of the Erdtree isn't a complete anomaly, and we've seen some great expansions in recent years, both standalones like Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and new bolt-on campaigns like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. But every year it feels a little less likely that this is the route that game studios will take to follow up a big hit game or to greatly improve upon one. The live service model relies on keeping players engaged for long stretches of time, and that monetization system demands volume and variety (if you can't get 'em with the Rick & Morty skin, you gotta have that dabbing Goku as an alternative). Season passes sometimes cost as much as an expansion these days, but again are usually designed around the idea of trickling out snacks before players have fully moved on from a game. Last year's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, for example, offers two "story packs," a "bonus quest" and a cosmetic "Resistance bundle" for $40 in its season pass.

Even a good season pass—like Dark Souls 3's, which includes two meaty areas to explore in Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City—lack the length or breadth to really go hog wild with new ideas. I think this very thing must have frustrated FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki, because he told me Shadow of the Erdtree had to be big so that players could "experience that sense of discovery, and that sense of wonder and exploration again." That was something only a proper expansion could accomplish, and Erdtree got me in a mood to celebrate other similar accomplishments.

We've written about the PC's best expansions before, but this time I wanted to break down the unique ways expansions can elevate our favorite games.

Some of the best sequels? Secretly just expansion packs

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Thief 2: The Metal Age, Fallouts 2 and New Vegas, even the legendary Doom 2: they're all kind of just expansion packs to their respective original games. Shared enemies, code, assets, slight iteration on the tech side but utter coups in terms of design. I don't mean to insult these games by calling them expansions rather than sequels—their expansion pack energy is one of my favorite things about them.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Doom 2 is maybe the ultimate example of how valuable an expansion can be, even if it has a number on the box. It reused the same technology, allowing id to refine its level design and make a laser-targeted addition of a new weapon. The super shotgun would quickly become Doom's most iconic and satisfying gun. Today the two games are practically blended together—Doom 2 has essentially subsumed the original to simply become "Doom," serving as the template for decades of mods. 

Alternately: Expansions can be like mini sequels

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Baldur's Gate 2: The Throne of Bhaal, baby, aka. Baldur's Gate 2.5, or even the real Baldur's Gate 3⁠—making Larian's joint Baldur's Gate 4? Whatever you want to call it, the capstone of the Bhaalspawn saga felt more like a full, standalone game than something subordinate to 2000's Shadows of Amn. You get new villains, a completely new setting, and a self-contained story that finally wraps things up with your dead god of death dad, Bhaal.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree really has a similar magic: both games have all the juice of a full sequel, but by being built on the same tech base, were turned around in a much shorter amount of time.

Expansions are a salve for bloated development times

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I'm gaining a new appreciation for expansions, rare as they are, in our modern era of bloated development times. Arguably the best part of Shadow of the Erdtree and last year's Phantom Liberty are that they gave us more Elden Ring and Cyberpunk to play within two or three years, as opposed to the five to seven we've come to expect from massive-budget games. It's an inherent advantage of expansions that they build on top of completed work, reuse assets, and set reasonable expectations with players about how much will be brand new and how much is familiar. Sometimes, expansions can even blossom into smaller standalone games, like Assassin's Creed Mirage or Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Expansions let your character live on when, let's face it, you should probably retire them and start over

Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: So there I was in Oblivion, head of the assassin's guild and the thieves guild. Also, head of the fighter's guild. And the mage's guild. Clearly, it was time for my ridiculous character to retire, but I'd kind of grown attached to him and was looking for any excuse to avoid starting over with some new meat. Then along came Shivering Isles, which was like another 40 hours of adventure on an entirely new continent. Perfect. I took my overqualified dude for one last spin, collecting another few houses-worth of loot, and put off the inevitable—having to say goodbye to an OP character—for another few weeks. 

Expansions have the best levels

Wes Fenlon: Developing a videogame is like trying to fly a plane while you build it, or so I've heard—I've never built a videogame or a plane. But the point developers usually want to get across is that they have to design the game while simultaneously building the technology they need to design the game, and assuming those two things do fully gel, it likely won't be until very late in the process. That almost inevitably means that development will end with a lot of unrealized ideas just as the technology and design have finally hit their groove. If the team then makes a sequel, they've got to consider upgrading that technology and designing a whole new experience arc for players to go through even if they haven't played the first game. But an expansion presents the opportunity to pick up right from that groove.

Shadow of the Erdtree's new setting is the freshest example of this: it goes further in blending more intricate areas with the exploration of an open field. But I also want to call out BioShock 2: Minerva's Den, which compressed an immersive sim down to a tight five hours or so. That means there's no little for wasted space in the levels; they need to serve story, combat, stealth and exploration all at once. While writing about more recent FPS expansion Amid Evil: The Black Labyrinth, we highlighted that its new levels "are almost all superior to anything in the original game. The enemies are a more thoughtfully balanced bunch, the environments are more varied and detailed, and the bosses are multi-phase slobberknockers that really elevate the midpoint and finale." 2021 Quake expansion Dimension of the Machine pushed this concept to the limit, showing how much more intricate you could make levels in a '90s game engine given enough time and study. I wish more games had the luxury of follow-ups like that decades later. 

Expansions give us a concrete thing to play and be done with

Wes Fenlon: A trickle of DLC levels, updates with weapons here and there, all the sorts of things we've come to expect from season passes: that's just not really what I want in a singleplayer game these days. Despite being smaller than full expansions, these often still come out months after a game's launch, which can be awkward timing for a game I've already mostly finished. Do I really want to go back to a game just for another couple hours to do some new quests? Eh. Maybe I'll catch them on an eventual replay when they feel naturally integrated into the campaign. That's how I eventually played both Mass Effect 2's and Dark Souls 2's DLC levels years after they initially came out. But there aren't many games of that length I replay. 

Expansions, on the other hand, feel like proper events. Like the second act of a play, it's important that they be more compressed and more impactful than the first, justify you returning to your seat, and then send you out on a high note. Last year's Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty did a fantastic job of that, cementing Cyberpunk's comeback and waving a flag to players that said now is the time to play this game. As editor Tyler Colp wrote in our GOTY awards: "CDPR spent a long time refining how to tell a story in this world and it shows. Phantom Liberty has a firm grasp on the sort of bold storytelling that made the Witcher 3 great, wielding both the technical artistry of the world and the team’s strong writing to center its broken cast of characters. It’s refreshing and mature in a way I never expected this game to pull off and it has me excited to see more." 

Expansions can seamlessly integrate into a campaign and make it feel brand new

Wes Fenlon: We might still call XCOM 2 one of the best strategy games of the last decade on the strength of the base game, but its expansion War of the Chosen was what really sealed it. It added so much variety to XCOM 2, including a new enemy class, heroes with their own tech trees, bonds between soldiers (which would be explored far more in depth in Firaxis' next game Midnight Suns), more mission modifiers… and those are all just the sides for the main course, the Chosen themselves. XCOM was always a bit light on personality with its blank slate soldiers and generic near-future military aesthetic, but the Chosen added outright villains who taunted you, adapted to your strategies as you defeated them, and felt so good to take down in big, epic finales.

As our editorial director Tim Clark wrote when we awarded it best expansion in 2017: "I scarcely see War of the Chosen as an expansion. To me, it feels like XCOM 2's final form. This is the game Firaxis always intended, complete with sneering alien supervillains, sweet new gear to research, and in the resistance factions, some incredibly cool characters to fight alongside. At this point XCOM 2 feels like it's become this delicious, rich, selection box of sci-fi chocolates." 

Expansions can recontextualise endings—and even beginnings

Sean Martin, Guide Writer: I've always had a soft spot for expansion packs that feel like entire games in their own right, especially those that work to recontextualise and inform what's happening in the base game. It's something that Shadow of the Erdtree does masterfully, exploring Marika's dark past, and the shadowy foundation that the shining Golden Order was built upon. It forces you to reconsider your journey to become Elden Lord.

My favorite ever DLC switcheroo moment, though, was in The Witcher 3's final Blood and Wine expansion. You might recall that later in the plot you meet a vampire called Orianna and eventually a confrontation ensues. What I didn't realize until later was that Orianna is the vampire featured in the original cinematic teaser trailer for The Witcher 3... before the base game had even released. 

Her appearance and the events of the expansion recontextualise that entire teaser, turning it from a prologue into an epilogue set after the events of Blood and Wine. It's not a massive thing, but it's such a cool rug pull and I swear I think about it monthly. It's also pretty indicative of the level of detail and planning that goes into these big expansions.

Expansions can change gaming history

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: Starcraft came out in 1998, and a mere nine months later Blizzard and Saffire Games launched the expansion to rule them all: Brood War. Think of it as something of a do-over, a director's cut, something that cemented and ensured Starcraft's place as the greatest competitive RTS of its day, and fixed problems that would otherwise have prevented its growth into an esports phenomenon.

Brood War came with a new singleplayer campaign, which I remember fondly, but like so many others my only interest was what it did to multiplayer. Starcraft was a brilliant game, but it had problems: as a Terran for life I would say this, but the Zerg were overpowered in a way that made the TvZ matchup difficult at best, and things were even worse for Protoss players. 

The original multiplayer was a bit of a mess of Zergling rushes and mass-Mutalisk that Terran and Protoss had poor answers to. Brood War introduced, among other units, the Terran medic, giving the bread-and-butter marines much greater survivability, and the Protoss Corsair, a dedicated anti-air fighter that in sufficient numbers absolutely chewed through mutas. 

There's a whole lot more to it, but Brood War added units, tweaked others, and removed the balancing flaws to such an extent that it would go on to be played professionally and sustain a national league in Korea for over a decade. If Brood War didn't get the balance between its three factions perfect, it arguably came as close as any game ever has.

Finally, and this is something you feel in the gut, Brood War just made Starcraft that much more exciting. It gave each faction many more options, in a game that was already rammed with them, and enhanced the core demand that players constantly juggle between the macro scale of building bases and the micro scale of managing every battle down to the individual units. This expansion was one of the most transformative and impactful ever made. Starcraft has a big place in gaming history, and particularly competitive gaming. With no disrespect to the excellent original game, it has that place because of Brood War.

Acutis died in 2006 at 15 years old from leukaemia, but dedicated his short life to spreading awareness of the Catholic faith and helping the poor. He was born in London to Italian parents but would go on to spend most of his life in Milan. Acutis is remembered by family as enjoying playing videogames such as Halo (naturally), Super Mario and Pokémon, and had a PlayStation from eight years old: though the devout young man limited himself to one hour's play a day.

The process for becoming a saint can take decades if not hundreds of years, but Acutis has become a cause celebre among Catholics and is a hugely popular figure. The teenager, who is most often depicted in jeans and trainers, was nicknamed "God's influencer" for both his online work and being emblematic of the younger generation of Catholics: Acutis created a website documenting reports of miracles across the world which found a huge following.

"As I did, you too can become holy," his mother Antonia Salzano told CNN in May. "Nevertheless, (with) all the media, the technologies, it seems sometimes that holiness is something that belongs to the past. Instead, holiness is also something nowadays in this modern time."

Salzano went on to say that, from the age of nine, Acutis would spend time helping the Milanese homeless and, among other things, insisted on only owning one pair of shoes, with any money saved going to help the poor. 

Becoming a saint requires that candidates have two distinct miracles attributed to them, which are examined in considerable detail by church authorities. Acutis was first beatified in 2020 after a Brazilian boy with a pancreatic defect was cured, following his mother's prayers to Acutis to help her son.

The second miracle involves the reported healing of a Costa Rican girl who suffered a serious head injury after falling off her bicycle in Florence, Italy. Her mother prayed for the girl's recovery at Acutis' tomb in Assisi, and lo and behold her daughter made a full recovery.

Acutis' path to sainthood has been unusually short. A person cannot be nominated for canonisation until five years after their death, so Acutis' cause began six years after his death in 2012. He was decreed "Venerable" in 2018, "Blessed" in 2020, and, although a date has not been set, is expected to be declared a saint during the Catholic church's jubilee celebrations in 2025. When it does happen, the Pope will formally declare Acutis a saint in St Peter's Square in Vatican City, after which the Catholic Church will remember him annually on a feast day, and parishes and schools can be named after him.

One of the odder manifestations of Acutis' posthumous fame is a project named The Acutis Game. Billing itself as "the first Catholic open-world metaverse", the game will apparently follow Acutis as he time travels over the centuries, meeting other saints and key figures in Catholic history and travelling to various Holy sites. Among other highlights, this metaverse will allow you to ski as a young Pope John Paul II.

"We are thrilled to welcome Singularity 6 to Daybreak Games," Daybreak Games CEO Ji Ham said in the acquisition announcement. "S6 is an excellent addition to our development studios, renowned for their success in creating large-scale online games and content.

"Their debut title, Palia, is a fantastic addition to our online portfolio. We eagerly anticipate collaborating with the S6 team to make Palia the best online experience possible across all major gaming platforms and to help continue expand their community of players for years to come."

Singularity 6 was founded in 2018 by ex-Riot Games developers Anthony Leung and Aidan Karabaich, and announced Palia in 2021. The game entered open beta in August 2023 and launched on Steam in March 2024. It's also available on the Epic Games Store and Nintendo Switch.

Despite a positive reception and good player numbers—Daybreak said Palia has attracted more than four million players as of the end of June 2024, and that "over 100,000 players have been actively enjoying the game daily"—Singularity 6 has struggled. It laid off 49 employees in April 2024, just a couple weeks after Palia arrived on Steam, and then cut 36 more in May, representing about 40 percent of its remaining employees.

Daybreak Game Company, a developer and publisher of MMOs including Everquest 2, DC Universe Online, Planetside 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online, has had some struggles of its own in recent years: In 2022 an in-development Marvel MMO was cancelled, and in February 2024 it laid off "less than 15" employees as part of a "recalibration of our business."

"From Day 1, we have always wanted to forge alternate worlds that help deepen players’ lives—we believe we are on the path to that with Palia and are ever grateful for the initial player reception and support," Leung said. "But we ultimately want to get Palia into the hands of every gamer that wants to play it and we believe that we can best do so by partnering up with Daybreak, who have a proven track record of building gaming communities that last for decades. We look forward to benefiting from their experience, expertise, and investment into Singularity 6 and Palia."